


Escape Velocity

by cuddlebone



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, and each pairing is in a different time period, but it's all connected, so lee chan is the main character in the end
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-10-17 09:56:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 50,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10591632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuddlebone/pseuds/cuddlebone
Summary: Jisoo and Jeonghan are college students in 1990s Seattle, and they can hear each other’s thoughts. Seungcheol and Jihoon are part of a gang in 1940s New York, and they can share memories. Soonyoung and Seokmin are boy-scouts at a 1960s summer camp, and they only saw colour after they met. Mingyu and Wonwoo are in love in 1920s Paris, and any words they write appear on each other’s skin. Junhui and Minghao are apprentices in 1980s Hong Kong, and they can experience each other’s emotions. Vernon and Seungkwan are in 2100s San Fransokyo, and a clock had been quietly counting down the minutes until they came together.Chan is sitting in his bedroom in 2017, wondering why names he does not recognize and dates decades before and after his time are scribbled on his exposed skin.(A soulmate AU.)





	1. Jisoo and Jeonghan

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: relatively minimal Homophobia and bullying.
> 
> Jihan's [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9Gf-f_hWpU)!

 

_1993-1994_

 

Two boys sat together on the hood of an old car, red-hot coals crackling in what remained of a campfire a few feet away from them. They looked slightly unkempt, but content and pink-cheeked nonetheless. They sat in each other’s arms, the slightly-taller, slightly-louder boy being the big spoon cuddled around the other. Just two college students taking a weekend off in the woods, a few miles off the freeway under the shadows of redwoods, bathing in the pale moon’s glow.

 

One of them is talking, sighing and affecting their speech. “My heart hurts, sometimes. When you _refuse_ to look at me, to acknowledge me.”

 

“Oh, shut up. The stars are nice tonight, I can stare at you any damn time,” the other griped back, not unkindly. No, lovingly, like an affectionate senior couple who knew each other so well they could make these scathing kinds of jokes without a problem.

 

“I’ll go inside and sleep, then,” the first voice, drawling and raspy and irritable, responded. The “big spoon” shuffled, trying to untangle himself so he could climb down into the backseat of the car and curl up in the mound of stolen blankets.

 

The smaller boy grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back. “Enough pouting, Jeonghan. You’ve got my one-hundred-percent attention now.”

 

The other boy, Jeonghan by name, didn’t even attempt to hide his smile as it bloomed. “So easy to manipulate, Jisoo.”

 

They bickered back and forth like that for a while, movements fluid and comfortable as though they were joined at the hips, or they had some other way of knowing what the other needed or wanted. They shared knowing glances every once in a while, threw their heads back and laughed in beautiful synchronicity even though nothing audible had been said. It was clear, even from an outsider’s perspective, that they had always been like this. Two peas in a pod.

 

They had not.

 

 

Jeonghan’s voice was the first of him Jisoo had felt or heard, and even now it remained one of the few things (besides Jeonghan’s existence overall) that could pull Jisoo together no matter the situation; anything on the scale of a meteor crash-landing and setting Seattle as they knew it into a heap of blue flames and rubble, or something as marginally insignificant as Jisoo failing all his classes and having to retake a semester.

 

It was a balance of soft-raspy, like a trickle of honey and a deep lion’s-growl all at once. It was bossy and sailor-mouthed early in the morning when he seared his hand with coffee sloshing out of two imbalanced mugs, and it retained a child-like intimacy when hushed, painful secrets were being whispered in Jisoo’s ear in the dead of night. It was like a much sadder, grown-up edition of those playground games whispered between sticky, clammy fingers and bites of pretzel and apple juice.

 

It all started out as a broken record replaying in his head, because somehow when he and Jeonghan both moved to the same area last year, they were hearing collages of each other’s days spoken in the other’s voice. It was flying-saucers-caught-on-tape weird, a connection that blossomed between them before they’d even _seen_ each other in person. And a faceless, anonymous voice echoing around inside of your skull starts becoming a part of you after a while, especially when you’re not sure it's even attached to a face or name. Jisoo pictured it in retrospect like one of those tin-can-and-string inventions kids made to talk to each other from either end of their backyards, but one not allowing direct communication and instead dropping off static-filled snippets on both receiving ends.

 

His thoughts spiraled in and out of coherence, haphazard and choppy and peppered with creative curses, TV commercials that’d been stuck in his head (that were subsequently jammed in Jisoo’s head too, thanks, Jeonghan!), quiz revisions, and the random countdown from 100 to 0 around bedtime that told Jisoo that Jeonghan counted himself to sleep when he was stressed.

 

The first instance, and by far the most memorable because of the explanation Jeonghan had given when Jisoo questioned it later, was during Jisoo’s first autumn at university. He’d been sitting at his sticky oak kitchen table eating plain Lucky Charms by the handful, and revising for his tests, when giggles of pure, sugary giddiness, more sugary than the cereal he was chewing, washed over him in waves, until he felt like laughing out loud himself.

 

Maybe Jeonghan had aced a test? Bought a new car? Was out partying? No, it turned out at that very same moment, two residence halls down, the absolute dork had gotten one of his friends to burn three cassettes of various bands’ music for free, playable on his car’s stereo _and_ the tiny radio he had on his bedside table. Well, not really for free, Jeonghan had corrected himself, but all he had to do was help his friend revise for his Calculus midterm- which was apparently such a cheap price for _free music_ and Jisoo the “fuckin’ dweeb" clearly didn’t understand music if he didn’t see that his overwhelming happiness was totally justifiable.

 

And Jeonghan’s music taste was painted on his face, flavouring his lips and staining his voice, as cheesy as it all sounded, the lyrics probably inspiring his brash words and even translating into his fashion sense. He wore thin thrifted blue flannels and oversized, ramen-stained hoodies, and he managed to make them look like magazine cover outfits. His hair was past his jaw and combed and reined into a semi-presentable lion’s mane. He was the definition of a mid-1990s Seattle native and a direct dichotomy when compared to Jisoo’s pencil-pushing, sheltered, uptight nature and his constant flurry of _thank yous_ and the way he buttoned his ironed dress-shirt collars right up to his Adam’s apple.

 

His voice sent shivers down Jisoo’s spine, his curved cat eyes, when fixed in an intense gaze, made goosebumps erupt all over his arms, and the touch of his knife-cut, heart-shaped lips on his skin made all the wispy peach fuzz on his body stand up and shiver in collective adoration. The sight of all his five-foot-eleven existence made Jisoo’s stomach dissolve into warm pink goo. And the worst part of it all was that Jisoo didn’t notice the effect it had on him, he didn’t notice how helplessly, pathetically in love he was with a _boy,_ how attached to every word and blink and breath he was until many months later. If he had realized earlier on, both their insecurities would have melted and they’d have had more time spent together before it was all over.

 

They met maybe four weeks after they’d begun haunting each other’s minds. Yeah, they both agreed that ‘haunting’ was the rightest way to put it, because their voices came out of nowhere and startled them like headphones were on maximum volume and taped to the insides of their ears. Jisoo would be daydreaming in a lecture and jump in his seat to a very angry, not-even-his-voice _I hate cheap hair scrunchies!_ ricocheting and ringing in his eardrums with no context given whatsoever. Similarly, Jeonghan would be trying to win a game of checkers against his roommate, only to get distracted by a sliver of Jisoo’s conversation with his mother on the payphone down the street.

 

 

It was in the school parking lot at that time between dusk and darkness, raining softly so that the asphalt and the freshly painted road markers glistened and puddles reflected the setting sky. Jisoo didn’t have a car, but he’d learned from some older student that this was an easier shortcut than walking across the length of the campus to reach the residence halls, so he was trying it out.

 

A boy, definitely no older than nineteen, was leaning against the hood of an ancient, beat-up Mercedes with streaming windows. He was holding a cigarette between his teeth and struggling to light it, even with his hands cupped around the lighter to shelter it from the wind. In the gloomy blue light that filtered and coloured and dribbled into every corner of Jisoo’s field of vision, Jeonghan and his then-ashy blond hair and the orange lighter sparks were a standout in the empty lot. But it wasn’t until Jisoo _heard_ that voice that had been haunting him saying _I’ll buy a new lighter on the way home_ and physically saw the boy in front of him tuck the cigarette away and sigh that he put two and two together.

 

But that wasn’t enough to get awkward Jisoo to initiate conversation, he just shuffled away, white knuckles around his umbrella staff, giving Jeonghan a sidelong glance; he couldn’t see him well with three-quarters of his face shrouded in darkness and the last quarter covered by hair, but if he had, the staring would’ve been way more intense. Jeonghan was now staring back. As far as Jisoo knew, the empty, sizing-up kind of stare that meant nothing in a situation like this. The voice in Jisoo’s head begged to differ- the one that wasn’t his, but _Jeonghan’s_ , let out a soft s _hit, he’s cute. But did I cut myself shaving or something, why’s he staring?_

 

“I heard that,” Jisoo blurted. He covered the lower part of his face and blushed warmth into his hands.

 

“What?” It was  _that_ voice, the soft-raspy lilt that had become somewhat a part of Jisoo these last few months, he’d heard it ramble and rant and laugh so often. But it was being spoken out loud, not an echo in his head, and it had a face to attribute it to. A face scrunched up in confusion, but even in poor lighting, a beautiful one.

 

Time to risk sounding insane. “I heard you. You just thought to yourself, shit, that guy is cute, didn’t you?” Jisoo still had his hand covering the lower part of his face, and he wanted to lower his umbrella and hide behind it. Pretend his stupid blabber-mouth didn’t even word-vomit in the first place, he could’ve just walked away and acted like he didn’t _hear_ this other dude’s _thoughts_. “This isn’t an attempt at self-flattery, uh, but I’m positive I heard you inside of my head…”

 

“Wait- your _voice,_ _you_!” Jeonghan dropped the lighter on the ground, maybe for dramatic effect or out of genuine shock. “I’ve been hearing you talk to your mom and talk in your sleep and recite your physics test prep for _weeks,_ what the fuck!” Jeonghan’s eyebrows were raised so high they threatened to disappear into his hairline.

 

“But I don’t even know you?” Jisoo said, taking a few steps closer to Jeonghan so they’d stop yelling across the parking lot, and maybe _just_ maybe so he could get a better look at the guy.

 

“And you think I know you? This is as much of a mindfuck for me as it is for you.” Jeonghan tilted his head sideways and rubbed a strand of hair between his fingers. And lower, under his breath as though to himself, he kept mumbling, “what the fuck. What the actual fuck.”

 

“I have too many questions right now. And they’re not really even directed at you, but-”

 

He interrupted him. “I hope you haven’t been hearing the weird crap I churn out on a daily basis.” Jisoo gave a non-committal shrug, because yes, he had been internalizing and probably misunderstanding thousands of strings of words and curses and interesting (to say the least) statements coming from Jeonghan’s end. But he wasn’t really complaining about it now, because it had been pretty entertaining to tune into someone else’s life.

 

“Why did something better kept in my head have to be my first statement to a, a-” _guy like you_ were his thoughts, dropping into Jisoo’s mind hot off the press. They made more pinkness bloom in the apples of Jisoo’s cheeks. “You heard that too, huh?”

 

Jisoo nodded. Jeonghan looked ready to dig up his grave right there and then, in a state university parking lot. He wanted to _die_ and it might as well have been spelled out in red Sharpie across his forehead.He wanted something heavy and instantly-fatal to fall out of the sky and smithereen his body into a grease-spot on the pavement. He wasn’t one for exaggerations, but this was not how he wanted his first interaction with someone like Jisoo to go.

 

“I’m Jisoo Hong, either way. It’s nice to meet you.” He wiped a hand on the side of his thigh, hoping the jeans would absorb the nervous sweat buildup in his palms, and stretched it out for Jeonghan to shake.

 

“Jeonghan.”

 

“What, no last name?”

 

“Yoon, Jeonghan Yoon.” He took his hand and shook it, and Jisoo could feel the ridges and coldness of metal rings around Jeonghan’s spindly fingers, the outline of a cross pendant dangling from the silver bracelet around his wrist. Colour was fading from the sky and a moaning gale was picking up around them, making the situation seem even more surreal and absolutely bizarre.

 

“And, this is weird, but can you pinch me or something just so I’m one hundred percent positive you’re real and I’m not hallucinating?”

 

Jeonghan looked like he wanted to say many things, many teasing things about a stranger asking him to pinch them and referring to him as a potentially supernatural being. But he was content with just flashing a smirk in Jisoo’s direction and reaching over and and pinching his upper arm light-bruise-level hard. “There. I’m as much a sack of human flesh as you are.”

 

He rubbed his arm. “Thanks. So, um, I’ll see you around campus?”

 

“Hear my whining before you even see me, more like.” Jeonghan chuckled, but the confusion still hadn’t faded from his face and Jisoo probably reflected the expression back at him. This whole thing was so insane (maybe they were both insane), or actually long-lost siblings like something out of a book or movie. But Jeonghan had called him cute twice, so was this going to turn out like Star Wars, but like, _two guys_ and in real life on earth? Jisoo hoped _not._

 

“Okay. Yep.” Jisoo tried to back away slowly, but Jeonghan still hadn’t let go of his shirt sleeve after he’d pinched his bicep. He either didn’t realize what he was doing, or he was clutching Jisoo so he wouldn’t melt out of his grip like sand in a sifter, because they’d just met and there were still so many unanswered questions. And the risk of Jisoo becoming a wallflower among the sea of faces on campus was much too high. If Jisoo was this inept at conversation, Jeonghan had to step up and front something.

 

“So that’s it? No telling me your room number, your major, nothing? We can read each other’s minds but that doesn’t, I don’t know, confuse you?” The streetlights came on and flooded them in harsh luminescence from overhead. Jisoo had the urge to hide his face in his hands, fully this time, but peek through his fingers so he could see Jeonghan under better lighting.

 

“It does _,_ man, but what can you do about it.”

 

“How about I drive you to the dorms instead of you walking?”

 

“I dunno how I feel hitching a ride off a stranger I just met in a shady parking lot.”

 

“I’m not gonna kidnap you… it’s getting pretty stormy, though.” On cue, thunder rumbled and echoed in the distance and the wind stirred leaves and old garbage from the corners of the parking lot up into mini-hurricane flurries. “And we’re not _really_ strangers.”

 

Jisoo walked begrudgingly to his car. “This is a horror movie waiting to happen. My mom’d kill me.”

 

“Wait, do I look like a murderer to you?”

 

He responded with another non-committal shrug, and Jeonghan laughed. Hard and full and echoing like the thunder above, stopping when he opened the shotgun door to help Jisoo into his beat-up car. It was perfectly appropriate for his age and West Coast college student status, polaroids and a single Doc Marten littering the floor, crumpled coffee cups and burned cassettes rolling around on the backseat cushions. When he rolled down his window, a few waxy fast-food wrappers slid around on the dashboard.

 

Jisoo wasn’t actually scared of Jeonghan kidnapping him, and that was pretty obvious, it was just his awkward, inexperienced way of joking around.

 

“Isn’t your dorm room 59?” Jeonghan asked him five minutes later, because that was really all it took to drive from one end of campus to the other. “And your roommate is some grubby scholarship jock you hate?”

 

Jisoo didn’t even question Jeonghan’s knowledge of this, because he’d probably recited the dorm number fifty-nine _million_ times to memorize it at the beginning of the semester. As for the roommate, he internalized the beefhead’s existence, food stealing and teasing and all, on a regular basis because he was too turn-the-other-cheek cowardly to actually do anything about it. Jeonghan had probably received bits and pieces of all his mental venting after he finished dealing with the idiot every night. The best were the days when he went on overnighters to play games in other cities, because Jisoo could actually breathe and tidy the place up (and maybe empty a can of air-freshener on Jock’s side of the room). “Yours is 95?”

 

Jeonghan struggled to keep his mouth from falling open again. That was happening to them a lot. “Holy shit, man, 95 with the fake rosebush-”

 

“-that you hide your spare key under.”

 

“ _Jesus-fuck._ ”

 

 

“So, what do you like to do, Jisoo?” _Jee-soo._ The slight Korean accent sent tingles up Jisoo’s spine, it reminded him of his mother and something else. It gave him the feeling of being cozy and safe and at home somewhere. Not necessarily at _home_ home back in Los Angeles, though. It was weird that a simple accent on a voice could make him feel like this, even when crammed into a small pub seat for the third time this week and surrounded by the clatter and yelling of drunk beings. And Jeonghan was drunk, but even on his third pint of beer, eyes shining and cheeks glowing, he didn’t stop asking Jisoo a multitude of “icebreaker” questions.

 

He was trying to get used to Jeonghan’s voice and presence, to stop shivering and getting goosebumps and tickles in the nape of his neck every time he talked out loud. Just his voice was enough to melt Jisoo down.

 

These last three “dates” at Quinn’s Pub he’d be seated by Jeonghan the bartender and he’d spend twenty minutes fiddling with the watch around his wrist and tracing shapes in the deep scratches on the table surface, watching him shaking the last drink of the shift behind the bar countertop, and watching the fake customer-service smile slide right off his face when the clock struck midnight each and _every_ time. When his shift was finally over, he practically ripped the apron off of him and tossed it in the backroom, and this time he switched it up by bringing him a virgin Margarita, because it apparently looked like the kind of thing Jisoo would like. It didn’t taste half-bad.

 

“I don’t know, I like sleeping in late? Is that a thing to like to do?”

 

“Dude _, yes._ ”

 

“I don’t really have much talent besides that and, you know, doing my schoolwork on time…” His sentences, when not stuttered out, usually trailed off as awareness of what he was saying settled in. It was hard for him to be comfortable in his own skin and talk about himself without feeling like he was an utterly boring cookie-cutter of a person. It was an irrational way to think, and maybe if he’d had some drinks he’d loosen up like Jeonghan, but one of them had to be sober enough drive Jeonghan’s car and the guy himself back to campus. “I can play the guitar a bit?”

 

“That makes two of us, then.” Jeonghan took a swig of his drink and grinned. It might be drunkenness settling in on him like the dregs in his cup, laziness and happiness overtaking other feelings, but it might be being faced with a shy, messy-haired Jisoo, looking soft in a yellow Alpaca-fleece sweater and perfectly prim and small out past midnight on a weekend in the suburbs that made the expression on Jeonghan’s face so fond. “I played bass, but you strike me as an acoustic kinda guy.”

 

Jisoo nodded. “Mom was too afraid I’d start a band and learn what, like, weed was and get _piercings_ or something, to let me play the drums or electric.”

 

 _Look who you’re sitting with now._ Jingly lobe piercings up and down both his ears, a leather jacket clinging to a band T-shirt that clung to his bony torso, et cetera, the absolute image of the misfit wild child Jisoo’s mother would have nightmares over her son being within twenty feet of. And they were sitting in a potentially-dangerous neighborhood in the AM hours, chatting over bottles of Heineken and trying to drown out the gambling and Billiards and the loud music around them. But he didn’t want to think of his mother right now, not with his conflicting thoughts about how good Jeonghan looked and how upset she would be learning about just _one_ of the components of this outing. “You don’t take your parents’ wishes too seriously, hmm.”

 

“I am studying Nuclear Science because of them, this is the smallest form of rebellion at this point.”

 

“That fucking sucks.”

 

“Yeah, but see? My life’s been planned out for me and I can literally do nothing besides study hard, I can’t even talk to my professor without getting tongue-twisted,” Jisoo said, feeling oddly comfortable spilling this out to Jeonghan. He felt kind of connected to Jeonghan, like he had a guarantee he wouldn’t judge him and they were more than two kids that met in a parking lot. Whatever the bond between them was, it felt deeper-rooted and heavier and much more intense. “You’re all confident and you don’t give a,” he gestured wildly to fill for the swear word that usually fit in the sentence, “about what anyone thinks, so it’s easy for you to say it sucks.”

 

Jeonghan’s face flickered a little. “Nah, it’s just that if you don’t step up and do things for yourself, no one else will. It’s a dog-eat-dog world and no one else gives a shit about you, so the sooner you step up and ask that uh, _voice_ in your head out or do what you want to do, the sooner you get things _done._ ”

 

So Jeonghan wasn’t a lightweight at all. Jisoo’s mouth fell open a little, and he pushed it back closed with his palm, which he proceeded to lean his chin into.

 

“It’s true. I should get out there more.”

  
“Well, consider this a start.” Jeonghan leaned in close, so Jisoo could smell his tart alcohol-tinged breath. It tinted his lips red; he looked so alive right now, so much more awake to the world at ungodly hours, compared to that snappish stupor he went into day in and day out. Jisoo felt like seeing him like this, so _close,_ was too much and too personal.He looked away from his lips and eyes because it felt strange to stare _there_.

 

“But you said you asked that voice in your head out,” Jisoo jabbed himself in the chest accusingly and cracked whatever moment that was between them. Things resumed around them again, sound seeping into their ears. He could’ve sworn time stopped for a mid-second there. “Does that mean this is considered… _a date?_ ”

 

He looked put out, but he recovered well. “I don’t know what this is. It’s whatever you want it to be.” _It could’ve been a date if he weren’t so terrified of it being one,_ his thought pierced.

 

He wanted to muffle his ears; he wasn’t even sure if Jeonghan was human or just some kind of magician or like, a Siren or something, he didn’t know what hearing his voice meant, he didn’t know what the difference between being in love or having a crush or enjoying someone’s presence was! And most importantly, he didn’t know if it was okay to even think of love around a guy, especially one he just met.

 

“It’s all kind of weird, isn’t it; I know you by your voice so well, but physically, we just met on Monday?” Jisoo said instead, pretending he didn’t hear any thoughts he felt like he shouldn’t have.

 

“Yeah, we’re strangers but I _know_ you. I know that you’re tanking chemistry-,” here Jisoo protested weakly, “and that you’re a sucker for churros, but I didn’t know your eyes were brown until last week.”

 

“And you hate cheap hair scrunchies, so I guessed you had long hair, but I’d never have known it was blond.”

 

“Do you want a refill?” Jisoo’s cup was empty and dripping condensation, but he shook his head. “This is the first time someone doesn’t abuse my employee privileges and end up blacking out.”

 

“I’m pretty sure you abuse your own free-drinks-after-hours deal enough.”

 

“I can’t deny that,” Jeonghan finished his cup and chewed on the melting ice cubes in the bottom.

 

“That’s probably the whole reason you started working here, huh,” he teased, pleased with himself, lip-corners curling up.

 

“Shut up.”

 

 

Jisoo didn’t drink, but he would fill Jeonghan’s chipped mug when it emptied and he was too lazy or drunk to fill it himself without spilling. He didn’t smoke, either, but he helped Jeonghan _once_ with lighting his cigarette when out in the rain, and it became a routine between them now. Jeonghan (the chainsmoker) rolled a cigarette delicately between his lips, clamped by his teeth, and poked him in the shoulder with the edge of it like a cat pawing for milk, and Jisoo flicked the lighter and watched the tiny tobacco grinds catch and smoke.

 

They’d just done that now, in fact, as they sat in one of the many spacious art classrooms, empty only because the class had just shuffled out. Jeonghan (an art major and art history nerd in the cutest possible sense) was always the last to leave this room, although he seemed like the _last_ person to stall heading back to his dorm after classes, but he responded to that by proclaiming himself a perfectionist. He didn’t make too much sense to Jisoo, and that was what was so intriguing about him. If people were laid out like a two-dimensional print, everything about them written out for the world to see, there would be no reward, no thrill when learning something new about them.

 

Jisoo sat on one of the sanded down step-stools, leg hooked around the step and his schoolbag at his feet, watching Jeonghan whisk around the room. He alternated between staring out the window and ashing his cigarette on the sill, tucking his things away in his bag, and adding finishing touches to his project before the mixed paints in his pallette crusted over.

 

He found himself staring at Jeonghan a lot these days, whenever he saw him and when he was unaware of Jisoo’s eyes following him; at the way his hair stuck out of the sides of his backwards-worn baseball cap in curly, wheat-field-in-May wisps, at the way his outer eye corners crinkled when he smiled, at the way he could practically see his mind working and deciphering and piecing together new things to ask to stuff up every idle moment between them. And he only showed shyness when Jisoo asked him a question or he caught Jisoo’s stares; but they both blushed until that moment passed.

 

If Jeonghan minded all the ogling somehow, he was very good at hiding it.

 

“The janitor kicks me out at least twice a week. I just sit here sometimes doing nothing. Don’t you like the smell of the canvases?” His voice sounded muffled around the cigarette.

 

“Yeah, but I mostly come here because you like it when I do,” he responded carefully. That sounded like he didn’t want to be here, didn’t it? “N-not that I don’t like watching you paint and procrastinate.”

 

“I told you I enjoyed your company after classes last week as a simple statement, and you’ve been walking me back to my dorm ever since.” Jeonghan sounded very happy about the arrangement, though, and Jisoo was lonely otherwise, so it worked out fine.

 

“And _you_ decided I wouldn’t be using the city bus or the train as long as your car is running and it has more than half a dollar of gas in it.”

 

“But it’s my job as the older Seattle native guy to show you around, it’s _different_.” Jisoo rolled his eyes.

 

“But you never let me pay for the gas or… some other kind of payment. It feels like I’m using you for your Mercedes and your mental map of the city.”

 

“I’m a nice person, not a chauffeur. I don’t charge for kindness.”

 

“ _Pfft._ But my point is; your wallet’s probably empty because of all the different drives around the city.”

 

“You’re so considerate, but consider this; my wallet’s always empty anyway,” he answered defensively, adding some pale purple shadows on the foreground of his painting. Jisoo didn’t know this many colours were used in one painting; he _knew_ you didn’t just use primary colours out of the tube, he took art class in high school, but this was delicate work and Jeonghan was so good at it.

 

“Fine, I like you being here, I’ll admit. I’m surrounded by art that way.” Jeonghan turned so his face was hidden completely as he said it, so Jisoo had a view of the back of his head and the cigarette smoke puffs spiraling above the painting-of-a-fruit-bowl project he was working on.

 

_Did you just-_

 

“Yeah, I did. And it was probably very stupid and potentially friendship-ruining of me, but I did,” Jeonghan tucked his textbooks into his bag and when he finally faced him again, he avoided his eyes and fixed them on a patch of sunlight on the ceiling behind Jisoo.

 

“I’m gonna do another potentially friendship-ruining thing now, too.” Jeonghan looked so determined, and his face was hardly a foot away from Jisoo’s, that he jumped back a little and covered his lips. He didn’t _want_ to react that way, but it happened despite his better judgment.

 

“ _I wasn’t going to_ _kiss you, idiot,_ ” he sounded irritated. He looked down and Jisoo saw two crumpled pink tickets in his hand, the serrated edges, freshly ripped at the ticket booth, with both their names printed on them sticking out. “I bought us concert tickets. Are you game?” _It doesn’t have to be a date. It can be whatever you want it to be._ Jisoo was still confused about thinking these thoughts about another guy, but a little monster inside of him whispered that he wouldn’t really mind if it _was_ a date this time. Would he? Should he?

 

“Oh, yeah, um, sure. I’d love to come!” Relief and that small smile’s return to Jeonghan’s lips showed Jisoo that things were alright again. It was tense and weird for a minute there, and his stomach had done a backflip at the thought of Jeonghan kissing him in this empty art classroom in the slanting, blood orange sunlight.

 

“Not to bring up the money thing again, but I would’ve actually smacked you if you didn’t take the ticket. Getting tix to see a good band live isn’t cheap.” Jisoo got the feeling Jeonghan said this only to fill in the gaps in their conversation and the mention of, like, _physical contact_ between their lips.

 

He read the small-print ticket information. “Pixies?”

 

“You haven’t heard of them, have you?”

 

“Nope.”

 

“Well,” Jeonghan raised an arm awkwardly (everything was so dripping with the stuff between them) as though he considered slinging it over Jisoo’s shoulder but thought better of it. He pretended to have been re-adjusting his baseball cap, _nice save_ , something like embarrassment but not to blushing point blooming on his face. After taking a moment to regain his composure, he said, “looks like today’s walk home will be a bit of a primer for the concert.”

 

 

“Your hair is _blue?_ ” It was more lilac and silver, but their lighting was limited (a few flashes from the stage in an otherwise dark concert arena) and Jisoo wasn’t really the type to articulate much into his speech.

 

“What, does it look that bad?” Jeonghan messed with the knot tying his bun together, and handed Jisoo an unopened beer he wouldn’t be drinking, that would probably be stolen back by Jeonghan when he finished his own bottle, although the gesture of buying him a drink was appreciated.

 

“No, no, it looks-” he frantically tried searching for a suitable word, something not flirty enough to give his emotions away because he’s not sure what they even are at this point, but a word that showed his appreciation nonetheless. God, why did he have to pay so much attention to the nuances in his words and how to flirt-but-not-really? Of course, by the time the silence was getting ripe and awkward between them, all he could manage to say was, “It looks guh.”

 

“ _Gee_ , thanks.” Jeonghan gestured for Jisoo to follow him and they both started making their way through the gathering crowd to get as close to the stage as possible. Jisoo hoped Jeonghan knew he wasn’t planning on raving or being in a mosh-pit or whatever like he’d seen at some other concerts, but he trusted Jeonghan’s instincts and experience to find them a good spot to enjoy the show.

 

“ _Move it,_ mohawk, this grass is reserved,” Jeonghan told some tall guy with a red mohawk, scaring him off the plot of land successfully (which was free for anyone with tickets to stand on, Jeonghan was just hustling). He turned around and gave Jisoo a brilliant smile.

 

Once they’d secured a spot and idled around for a minute finding the best angle to view the stage, on which a band was playing a slow, heartsick ballad and attempting to attract the eyes of the still-gathering crowd, Jisoo was finally able to take in his surroundings. “They’re really good!”

 

“This is just some shitty opening act, they’re not even the band we came to see yet.”

 

“Oh, whoops.”

 

“What kind of music _have_ you been exposed to?” He eyed him curiously.

 

Jisoo had to think hard, but Jeonghan was the heaven-sent combination of tipsy and naturally patient. His mother played old jazz sometimes when she was doing her spring cleaning, but otherwise it was whatever he heard on the loudspeakers at the mall or prom or leaking out of other students’ Walkmans at his high school. “Why’s it important to you to know?” He asked defensively.

 

“Because you’re interesting,” Jeonghan stated. “And I like learning uninteresting things about interesting people.”

 

_Eloquent, using the word ‘interesting’ three times in one sentence._

 

Jeonghan punched him in the shoulder. _Fuck off and let me live._

 

A few people stumbled by in a throng, breaking between Jisoo and Jeonghan and as a result pushing Jisoo deep into the crowd. Once in the crowd, he was lost and disoriented, pawing at random and getting handsy with all sorts of sweaty backs and distressed denim jackets. It was dark, too, and Jeonghan frankly didn’t stand out much in a crowd full of people dressed relatively similar to the way he did, but Jisoo didn’t want to call out for him like a lost kid in an amusement park. Well, not yet, he’ll try finding his way back to wherever they’d been standing.

 

He found Jeonghan easily within a few minutes, right as the band they came to see was on stage tuning their guitars or whatever (Jisoo didn’t do electric, he didn’t exactly know what they did with those).

 

“You’re going to get trampled if I don’t hold your hand.” Jeonghan nudged his shoulder and snaked his arm around so he could entwine his left to Jisoo’s right, and their hands and fingers nestled together like a hand in glove would. Jisoo’s hands were just bigger, fingers just nimbler and longer, to fill in any gaps and wrap over Jeonghan’s knuckles.

 

His heart was thumping, he could hear the blood rushing in his ears, and Jeonghan’s fingers felt soft and warm compared to his calloused, cold ones, so the touch sent shivers up his spine as well. It could’ve been some other reason, because every time Jeonghan had touched him he’d gotten the shivers. Either way, he didn’t remember ever being gladder for loud alt-rock music and total darkness.

 

He held his hand for the next few hours, religiously like it was a task he’d sworn upon doing, but nonetheless warmly and awkwardly and with the occasional squeeze or re-entwining. The band was alright, an attraction to Jeonghan’s eye and ear but kind of background music to Jisoo- but how do you tell that to someone, especially when the music wasn’t bad by any means, just that the person standing in front of you was so much more captivating than anything the stage could offer? _This is bad._

 

Jeonghan turned his head sharply, and then winced and patted his forehead. He’d stolen Jisoo’s beer, as expected, and danced around and yelled and chanted for encores freely until he was clutching at his throat and doubled over laughing at his own silliness, and by now the whites of his eyes had streaks of red and he carried himself in a slouch. He wasn’t really drunk as much as exhausted. “Hm? What’s bad?”

 

Oh, shit, Jisoo forgot about the whole telepathy thing and how it happened randomly and most inconveniently. “Nothing’s bad.”

 

“You’re a horrible liar, but okay. Show’s almost over and I have a headache, you wanna go?”

 

“Only if you’re ready to.”

 

“What a fucking gentleman.” Jeonghan untangled their hands, and Jisoo tried to keep his face from looking too crestfallen, he didn’t want to be that see-through on the outside _yet._ “Link your arm in mine.”

 

“So I don’t get lost.”

 

“ _Right_.”

 

Once they were out of the crowd and the gates of the concert venue they zigzagged down sidewalks trying to find a bus station for their ride back. This was because Jeonghan’s car ran out of gas and he flat-out _refused_ to let Jisoo pump even five dollars in for the ride there and back; a matter he was so infuriatingly stubborn about, and Jisoo so persistent, that they almost missed their bus here.

 

The sky was purplish tonight and the stars were out, and if they’d stopped sneaking glances at each other and paid more attention to their surroundings, they’d have noticed the November meteors arcing and fizzling like fireworks above them.

 

“Earth to Jeonghan, I have a question. If-if you don’t mind.”

 

He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Hmm?”

 

“Do you have a weird buzzing in your hand- the one that’s touching mine- right now?” His hand had been feeling like it was both being pulled towards and away from Jeonghan’s. It felt like the thin layer of airspace between their two hands was very gently throbbing and stinging with electricity.

 

“I think the buzz from your hand is the only thing keeping me awake right now.” He flexed his hand but kept it firmly wrapped inside of Jisoo’s. “It’s like the feeling you get with goosebumps, but weirder.”

 

“I was thinking more like accidentally electrocuting yourself and feeling spasms in your fingers for a while after.”

 

“Both work.”

 

“Why _are_ we still holding hands?”

 

Jeonghan looked down, like he just realized that their hands were still very much entwined together. Jisoo didn’t really mind, but he didn’t know if it was okay or normal to do that in public. Especially not at this tricky point in their “friendship”. “Because… because your hands are soft and they fit into mine.”

 

“I don’t really know how flirting works and I think you might be drunk, but I think I’m being flirted with,” he blurted. His palms got warmer.

 

“Would you rather I flirt and hold your hand and stay awake, or you give me a piggyback to my car?”

 

“I take that back. You don’t even sound drunk.” Jisoo stopped walking abruptly. “What I do know is you are getting braver by the minute, Yoon Jeonghan.”

 

“Aw, I was _this_ close to getting you to carry me. My legs are sore.”

 

 _I’m more hung up on the fact that you’re flirting with me… outside of your thoughts. With your mouth, physically._ A pause. _That sounded_ wrong.

 

 _That was like the tip of the iceberg when it comes to flirting, Jesus Christ…_ The thought faded out of coherence before he could hear the snappy tail of it, but it made him smile that Jeonghan could even boss him around inside his own brain. Eventually he got a belated _stop ruining the mood._

 

Once they reached the bus-stop, with the smooth blue plastic seats and the rain-shield roof and a tiny struggling streetlight, they had to break apart to act like regular friends because there were a few other people already sitting there. God forbid they walked in holding hands and flirting.

 

 

Jisoo thought he knew what it felt like to be stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean, with shark-fin tips forming a circle in the churning water around him. An exaggeration, but he felt unsafe and very much like a sore thumb floating on a separate plane in a room full of intoxicated, ugly-sweater-wearing college students. He stood by the front door, fiddling and shuffling his feet but _trying_ not to shrink in on himself and miss out on a college experience he’d regret not having ten years from now. All he wanted to do in that moment was be somewhere quiet.

 

Jeonghan had accompanied him for the last three hours, clinging to his shoulder and clutching fistfuls of his grandma-knitted red wool sweater, words slurring out and tickling Jisoo’s neck, spilling an entire can of Heineken down the front of his shirt on accident. But now he was waiting for Jeonghan to come back from “using the bathroom”, which shouldn’t take any more than ten minutes max.

 

In the back of his head, he wondered why he even let Jeonghan insist on going to do something alone- instead of letting himself worry, though, he set his wristwatch timer for five minutes and he would go wait in the car if Jeonghan didn’t return to their rendezvous point by the front door.

 

Jisoo found himself impatient whenever Jeonghan wasn’t around. He found that Jeonghan was on his mind more than his own wellbeing and responsibilities were. He found that his entire body stopped functioning properly when he thought about him, bent like a flower for sunlight when he saw him, even from a distance. He’d never experienced anything like this before, but he thought it might be a crush of some kind. _I mean, I liked his voice in the first place, but I didn’t know that meant I was in love with a real boy._ If this is what love was, confusion and shyness and fireworks going off in his stomach, Jisoo wanted to skip right to the happy ending.

 

The timer bleeped. He shuffled between a pair of girls and mumbled an apology as he grabbed the wrapped present he left o the shoe cabinet by the front door. It was a slightly early Christmas present he’d meant to give Jeonghan, shiny clumsily-taped gift paper and a small handwritten letter full of squiggly smiley faces and merry Christmas wishes.

 

He found himself out on the street, trying to remember where Jeonghan had parked his car. This was an off-campus party at a friend of a friend’s rental, and he had Jeonghan’s car keys (because they’d agreed after Jeonghan’s first cup of whatever that Jisoo was driving them back to the university), but it felt somehow illegal to unlock the car and use it without its owner present, so he’d probably just… linger around and try not to look like he was breaking into it.

 

It turned out the car’s owner was present, leaning against it hiding something behind his back and smiling nervously. “I was just gonna come get you.”

 

“I was…” What was the right word? What was sentence structure at this point, anyway, he forgot how to talk in front of _certain_ people. “...coming to get you too.”

 

“Had to get something.” The thing being held behind Jeonghan’s back crinkled with plasticky, candy-wrapper friction, but Jisoo’s mind was too clouded by love-induced worry to notice that.

 

“Are you sure your parents won’t mind their son having a crushing hangover when he pulls into their garage tomorrow night?”

 

“No, being a failure to your parents comes with the expectation that you’ll be an alcoholic on holidays, s’good,” he mumbled, shivering a little in his thin wet pullover. Frost was starting to form on the wet patch, or maybe falling snowflakes were sticking to it. “That’s why they don’t bring my cousins around. I’m a _bad_ influence, don’t you know.”

 

“Wanna go back to the dorm? Finish packing up, get changed out of your wet shirt?”

 

Jeonghan shakes his head, his hair sending bits of cold white stuff that’d caught in it while it fell from the sky, and confetti and other party debris. His hair was a Magpie’s nest by the end of a wild night, but it was always brushed and smoothed into a soft mane by morning. Jisoo kind of liked it when it was unruly and peppered with bits of paper-mache, paint, and glittery tinsel, he thought it looked a little magical that way. Especially surrounded by falling snow and the negative space of a dark December night, everything became a little surreal like that. “Ow. What are you hiding from me behind your back?”

 

Jisoo raised an eyebrow. “Hypocritical considering you have something behind your back, too.”

 

“Do you have a present? An actual early Christmas present?” _For me?_ His thoughts even sounded childlike and excited.

 

Jisoo mistook this as teasing and blushed.

 

“I have one for you.” Jeonghan brought his out first, teetering and swaying even on the flatness of the sidewalk and even with his back leaned up against a car to steady him. “Please like it. Oops, that was supposed to stay in my head!”

 

Jisoo hid his laugh in his hands. How was he supposed to focus on the present when _Jeonghan_ was here being hiccupy and cuddly and drunkenly loveable? He wanted to hug him. Not that he didn’t appreciate it, just that it paled in comparison to the thought of hugging and kissing Jeonghan. He took the present and tried not shiver when their fingers brushed.

 

“Should I unwrap it now…?”

 

“Whenever. What do you have for me?”

 

“Oh, here. It’s not much, but, uh,” He adjusted the lopsided letter attached to the bow at the top and wished he’d printed his cursives more neatly when he was writing it earlier. “Yeah.”

 

Jeonghan’s eyes widened. “Jesus-fuck, is that a vinyl? A genuine?” They were actually two vinyls, and apparently perusing the record store last week for presents was a good idea.

 

“I’m really. Wow-” he hiccuped loudly, “should I hug you or hug the present?”

 

Jisoo shrugged and was engulfed in a very tight hug before he could even process what was happening. He was being squeezed so tightly all at once that he felt like his head might explode into a shower of streamers and confetti, like their minds were two positive-charge magnets being forced together or something.

 

“You don’t even know what album it is yet.”

 

“I don’t care. I got a gift from Jisoo,” he sang loudly, and Jisoo shushed him. “A vinyl from Jisoo!”

 

“Let’s go home, c’mon, you look frozen.”

 

“I’m happier than I’ve been in so long, you know how that feels?” He told Jisoo as he buckled him into the shotgun seat. “All it took was one _right_ person to have that effect on me, huh.”

 

Jisoo drove them home in silence, foot hard on the break so they wouldn’t skid into a frozen ditch or someone’s backyard or something. He had Jeonghan’s presents (two small parcels wrapped in sparkly wax paper) in his lap, and he cranked the defroster all the way up so it could keep Jeonghan’s shirt thawed and the windows clear. And so the ventilation rattling and squeaking would buffer the silence a little.

 

He locked Jeonghan’s car and gently slid the keys into Jeonghan’s jeans pocket, steering him by the shoulders patiently across campus and towards their adjacent residence halls. There were only a few lit-up windows and strings of multi-coloured Christmas lights on the staircases, soft yellow squares of warmth on an otherwise eerily quiet building. All the good parties were off-campus tonight. “Do you need me to walk you up to your room? Are your roommates home?” He asked.

 

“Merry early Christmas, Jisoo.” Jeonghan disregarded his question and answered with something else entirely, his voice as sleepy as his drooping eyelids conveyed.

 

“Merry early Christmas, Jeonghan.” They stood there for a minute after that, snow falling around them, unsure if they should do or say anything else or if it would be overstepping whatever boundary there was between them. He wanted to pick the bits of colourful nothing out of his hair, but he didn’t know if he should. It was all so confusing. Jeonghan’s eyes looked like they were flecked with bits of colourful nothing themselves, reflections off the buildings or maybe reflections of his emotions; but Jisoo wasn’t aware there were white stars people’s eyes when they were happy. It was some kind of magic, something to make him fall even deeper down the rabbit hole, he was sure, but what he didn’t realize was that _maybe_ it was a reflection of his, Jisoo’s, own eyes at the moment.

 

Finally, Jeonghan saluted lazily and started zigzagging up the stairs, using the railing for support.

 

When Jisoo unlocked his own dorm-room door, Scholarship Jock wolf-whistled and clapped him hard on the back. “Does she have any friends?”

 

Jisoo felt like he was being violently shaken awake from one of those nothing-goes-wrong dreams. He gritted his teeth and said, “ _He_ ’s not a girl.”

 

“Oh, _sorry-_ ” Jisoo tried drowning out the words as his roommate followed him down the hall like a tall, beefy shadow, until he locked his bedroom door behind him. His mood wouldn’t be ruined tonight.

 

Beefhead banged on the door a few times for good measure, and shouted, rather gutturally, “Don’t think of bringing guys into your bedroom unless you want your teeth knocked out.”

 

“What are you, my mom?”

 

He laughed, probably at his stutter. “Just a reminder from one roommate to another.”

 

Once he heard his clunky footsteps retreating down the hall, he mumbled, “A death threat, not even a reminder.”

 

The wrappers of the presents were strewn in shiny red strips on the ground, to be cleaned up three weeks from now when he got back, and Jisoo had already listened to half the cassette and sprayed too much of the new cologne.

 

It wasn’t until the flight home the next day that he saw the ripped corner of notebook paper tucked into the front of the cassette:

 

**_this seemed like something to expand your musical horizons_ **

**_If you didn’t like, we can listen to more music at my place until we find something you do enjoy_ **

**_gotta get better at gift-giving before december 30th… the big day_ **

 

Jisoo wasn’t even surprised anymore. Of course he knew his birthday. And the insecurity pocketed under a too-chill-to-care attitude, this paper was like a sliver of Jeonghan to hold onto over the vacation.

 

**_tell the hong family the voices in your head say hi, and happy new years_ **

 

He rolled his eyes and tucked the paper carefully in his lapel pocket. Somewhere to the north, Jeonghan heard his own message being mentally relayed by Jisoo, and he was smiling so stupidly to himself (despite the fact that he was in the backseat of his parents’ car going to his aunt’s for dinner) that his mother was concerned. Because in all his nineteen years on earth, he hadn’t smiled this fully in her presence.

 

 

The invisible cord between them was stretched so thin it would’ve looked like a single strand of hair if it were visible, which meant he was too far away to hear Jeonghan. Just like it always was until he moved up to Washington state last fall, he was down in sunny California with no idea what Jeonghan was doing or thinking and no other method of talking to him.

 

“Where’s your brain?” his mother would ask, not unkindly, as she set the dinner table on New Years’ Eve.

 

“Oh, ah, schoolwork. The workload’s finally getting to me,” he’d lie passively as he followed her around the table, filling all the cups with syrupy Sikhye juice from the jug. It totally wasn’t Jeonghan wrecking his existence in the best way possible and without trying.

 

“Don’t slack like your father did in his last year of undergraduate work.” She warned as she carried steaming serving trays of seared pork ribs and rice cakes and Kimchi to the table. “Think of the nice girls at church.”

 

Jisoo’s stomach flopped like a fish out of water at that last sentence. _Think of the boy I’m telepathically connected to, and apparently very in love with, back in Seattle, more like._ His mother wasn’t being unkind, just ignorant because she didn’t know, he had to keep reminding himself.

 

“Mom, we’ve gone over this; I’m not interested in the nice girls at church.” He’s over eighteen, he has a right to state who he wants and doesn’t want to marry, right? They weren’t in a society where parents played matchmaker, and certainly not when he wanted everything _but_ to be tied down to some religious girl his mother thought was wholesome.

 

“If not the girls at church, why don’t you have a nice girl from college yet?”

 

He wanted to tell her that it was the last thing he was interested in, meeting a girl that fell under his mother’s criteria of ‘nice’. Anyway, the idea of being tied down in a relationship, even to Jeonghan, left a bitter taste in his mouth; all he knew was that his connection to Jeonghan must mean something and he didn’t want to suppress that. Maybe he’d warm up to the idea in due time.

 

It wouldn’t hurt to keep that side of him a secret from them, would it? He can just keep saying he’s not interested in marriage, because he’s focusing on his degree. Or maybe he could run away with Jeonghan, quit college and start a new life in the backseat of his car up in the Alaskan wilderness… his mind took these delusions and ran with them.

 

For now, staying put and figuring things out between the two of them after Christmas break was over seemed like the best way to start, even if that meant going back to struggling with his grades and living in the room across from a physically and verbally abusive jock.

 

 

Jeonghan glowed on sunny winter days, his skin like warm gold against the bleakness of the dead trees. It was cold, but there were no signs of rain or snow or wetness at all, a blessing in a place like Seattle (as stereotypical as that sounded). They were both still so bundled in layers of clothing that they couldn’t bend at the joints very easily, and they had to spend more time than they thought they would trying to find a picnic table in the outdoor cafeteria that _didn’t_ have puddles of water slow-shrinking and drying off in the weak sunlight.

 

They were sitting side-by-side instead of across from each other because by someone’s logical deduction ( _maybe_ Jisoo’s) they could conserve body warmth if they were closer together, and their psychology textbooks, and scribbly highlighted notebooks overlapped one another and flitted in the breeze.

 

He set his house keys down on the corner of the pages Jisoo was struggling to keep open in the wind and smiled. Jisoo had learned a new thing about Jeonghan’s personality this morning while he was nursing down some milk-less Lucky Charms; that Jeonghan was cranky when the weather was cold, and especially when it was cold and the prospect of midterm tests loomed over them. But he showed nothing of those thoughts in person; his dry humour mood-lifting and his smiles snow-melting, he was practically made of pure gold.

 

Love was in the winter air and cupid was probably trying to get a good aim from some hideout in the bushes behind them, because everyone including the gods was tired of them being so whipped for one another and doing nothing about it.

 

Jisoo was gnawing through his pencil and Jeonghan had resorted to puffs off a cigarette every time he messed something up in his practice sheets; that, and the wonderful weather, was part of why they were sitting outside for once instead of in the cafeteria. He was tired of following him out onto the large cafeteria patio and watching him suck down a cigarette, edges of the paper burning red and bits of tobacco ash scattering on both their boots.

 

His fingers crept across the table to the box of Marlboros, but Jisoo’s hand shot out and pressed the box top closed. “I’m sick of the smell,” he said, not looking up from his papers.

 

“Don’t I smell like cigarettes, by that logic?”

 

“Not really.”

 

“Can we play that game again, then?” Jeonghan slumped down and rested his chin on one of the psychology volumes he was supposed to be memorizing from.

 

“You’re procrastinating. That’s not good.”

 

“Why does it upset you if I want to flake off this entire semester?” It was a plea for attention, because he had laced his fingers around Jisoo’s pencil and pulled it right out of his hand as he spoke, demanding not to be ignored.

 

“Because... I care.”

 

“That’s a first.” Jeonghan cupped a hand around his ear and laughed at Jisoo’s fumbling hands and how his nose and upper cheeks got a little pinker than they already were.

 

“Oh please, your life isn’t that tragic. I’m sure your family and teachers cared about seeing you succeed like I do right now.”

 

Jeonghan used the pen stolen from Jisoo to draw tiny hearts on the margins of his papers. “I’d rather not talk about my school-years or my asshole parents when I don’t really _need_ to.”

 

“I guess I don’t wanna open those doors either, sorry.”

 

Jeonghan had a way of bringing the topic right back around to his original inquiries, which was in itself a roundabout way of saying he got his way with most things. “So, the game? Can we play?”

 

Ah, yes, the guessing game. Jeonghan probably liked it because it put both of them on the edge of being exposed for their true colours. They sat facing each other and tried clearing their heads and concentrating on each other’s thoughts, and depending on the results, they’d go into giggling fits or avoid eye contact for the rest of their outing. Sometimes it was as simple as Jeonghan hearing Jisoo’s _I’m hungry_ s and taking him out for burgers and a few games of air hockey, others it was Jeonghan’s unintentional _he’s so cute when his hair is like that_ s slipping out and making him hide behind his hair in shame or walk away to compose himself. It was fun and a little nerve-wracking, and at this point they both had the unspoken awareness that they were very in love, but it was like they were daring the other to confess first. A funny game of “tag, you’re it!”.

 

“One round," he sighed. “You can’t just not study, think of all the money you’re putting into attending each year.”

 

“Everyone knows I hate my psychology courses.”

  
“I thought you said you totally _loved_ them last week?”

 

“Not when I’m being graded, I fucking don’t.”

 

“Promise you’ll at least try and study after this break.”

 

“ _I’ll_ _try my hardest, Hong,”_ he gritted his teeth. “Talking about my grades depresses me, let’s cross our hearts or whatever and move on.”

 

They pinky-swore on it instead, which still set the deal in stone. Jeonghan turned sideways on the bench and sat with one leg folded and the other dangling onto the ground, eyes already shut.

 

Jisoo closed his eyes and concentrated hard. It kind of felt like he was trying to swim up to a surface that he may never reach, and the few times he did get a thought or the faintest vibration of Jeonghan’s voice, it felt like he’d reached said surface and gulped for air. Today his eyes were resisting the urge to stay closed and the buzzing in his brain was too loud, so he peeked and watched Jeonghan’s cute face instead.

 

“Are your eyes even closed?” Jeonghan asked suspiciously. Jisoo had the freedom to do all the staring he wanted when Jeonghan wasn’t looking, so he was greatly admiring his lips and how they puckered and smoothed as he talked.

 

“Uh, yep, totally closed.” A white lie, _really._

 

What Jisoo forgot was that even if he wasn’t concentrating on the game, Jeonghan was still trying to detect anything from his end and he’d forgotten to censor his thoughts. Before he could stop it, a thought so clear and blunt and un-Jisoo-like bubbled up in his head. _I really really want to kiss him but I don’t know if that’s normal or okay._

 

Jeonghan’s eyes flew open.

 

Jisoo chuckled weakly- there was still a chance he hadn’t heard that, right? Maybe his eyes flew open because he realized the sun was beginning to set behind the whisked-cream storm clouds brewing on the horizon, or because he remembered he had an appointment he was late for. “I guess my eyes _were_ open, ha-ha,” he said, trying to distract.

 

“I think it’s time to talk. ‘Bout stuff.” He didn’t sound upset, but his voice had a quality that Jisoo couldn’t name and it was unnerving. He was starting to shove his stuff into his backpack, haphazardly sliding it all off the table and forcing it to fit under the zipper of his bag.

 

“Can we pretend we can’t read thoughts anymore and that slip-up didn’t happen a minute ago?” Jisoo asked frantically, picking up the pencil Jeonghan elbowed off the table.

 

“Nice try. You can’t take things back once you’ve said them. Or thought them, I guess.”

 

This was bad. “Are you upset?”

 

“Do I _seem_ upset?” He stopped for a minute, the breeze rustling through his hair.

 

“Um, yeah?” Jisoo gestured at the textbooks he was cramming into his backpack and the way he had hopped off their shared bench like it was suddenly on fire after Jisoo’s stupid word, no, thought _-_ vomit.

 

“I’m not. At all. Really. I just think it’s time we talked about some things, stopped acting like we don’t know exactly what we want.” It was all vague or Jisoo was stupid, he certainly felt like he had ruined their friendship. He didn’t understand that there was nothing wrong with his thoughts, just that he needed to stop suppressing them and tell Jeonghan upfront that he liked him. He was always taught that suppressing your feelings was good somehow.

 

Jeonghan grabbed his hand and started leading the way across the brittle expanse of dying plants and cross-legged people sharing notes and library books. “Where are we going?”

 

“My place.”

 

“...why?”

 

“Because I don’t like giving the entire campus the privilege of seeing me act like a lovesick idiot.”

 

“So why’re you taking _me_?”

 

Jeonghan laughed and momentarily forgot about his struggle with his locked dormitory door. Jisoo, confused, took the key from him while he wheezed and unlocked it with non-jittery fingers. He was so clueless sometimes.

 

“You’re making _me_ second-guess why I’m bringing you.”

 

“Wait.” He was already in the tiny kitchenette, keys forgotten in the lock (how un-Jeonghan), but Jisoo thought he was finally putting two and two together. “This has something to do with us?”

 

“You’re the one who was thinking about what it’d be like to kiss me ten minutes ago,” he blamed, “ _you_ brought this onto yourself.”

 

Jisoo stood in the doorway, bewildered and stiff as a board and clammy all over. Jeonghan was being so weird and jittery, pacing the length of the kitchen and twisting the ring on his finger and… beads of sweat forming on his forehead and neck?

 

“Help yourself, but not the blue chair because it’ll give out under you.” Jisoo had an image of him sitting in the chair on his first day on campus, an unsuspecting freshman, and falling right through the cushion onto the ground. Jeonghan rummaged through one of his top cabinets and brought down a chipped Pizza Hut mug. “I’m making coffee. You want?” Because coffee fixed everything, and it _certainly_ calmed nerves before a confession from one tragically in love boy to another.

 

“Um, no? Thanks.”

 

Jisoo watched Jeonghan’s back for a while, how he had to tuck his head down between his shoulders to avoid hitting it on the cabinets above the sink and countertop, and how he was dropping everything he was carrying, spoons and sugar packets and coffee filters, even tapping his foot impatiently as he waited for his coffee machine to finish slow-dripping.

 

“You were staring at me earlier, weren’t you?” He said plainly and rhetorically, pulling out the chair next to Jisoo’s. “When we were playing the game?”

 

 _Because I’m in love, and I don’t know what to do._ Jeonghan had just taken a sip of his black coffee, and promptly choked on it, doing his best not to splutter all over the table. This was shaping up horribly and as embarrassingly as possible for both of them. It felt like an invisible audience, or a presence of some sort, was watching and laughing at them as they failed at _communication_ of all things, despite the extra telekinetic method available to the two of them exclusively. It was like the world made it so easy for them to get together and they managed to fuck even that up.

 

_He heard that._

 

 _Yes, “he” did,_ Jeonghan’s dry voice responded, swimming into Jisoo’s head. He looked like a statue, like the ones in European city squares that people swore had eyes that moved and followed them, except that his eyes were very clearly trained on Jisoo.

 

“We need to talk, and don’t make me start this long overdue confession just because I’m aware it needs to happen, Jesus-fuck, Jisoo.”

 

Jisoo’s heart thumped. How dramatic. “I’m having a heart attack.”

 

“What?” Jeonghan pressed his hand gently against the left side of Jisoo’s chest, which did not help, and felt around for his heartbeat. “You’re not, if you feel mine my heart is beating the same way.”

 

Jisoo gulped at the thought of feeling Jeonghan’s chest, the plaid flannel he wore with three top buttons left open. Jeonghan sighed. “Nevermind, _don’t,_ you weirdo. I was trying to make you feel better about, you know, the nerves.”

 

Jeonghan was breathing fast and shallow, caffeine probably kicking in. Even someone who seemed to have mastered life would still be nervous confessing, and that thought did comfort Jisoo. “I’m the least likely person to believe in love at first sight or some other sappy bullshit like that, but I have loved you, or whatever, from the day we met. Since before then, if we’re gonna be specific.”

 

“I think I started liking you a long time before we met,” Jisoo stammered.

 

“I didn’t hear you properly, can you repeat that?” Impossible, they were sitting so close and he was smirking.

 

“Don’t make me.”

 

“Do you want to kiss me, Jisoo?” Jeonghan moved a little closer, so close that Jisoo’s eyes had trouble focusing on his face without blurring.

 

“Well, I, I, I um-” Jisoo whispered a small, hardly audible _fuck it,_ or maybe he thought it and Jeonghan heard it and nothing actually came out of his mouth, but he leaned in and planted one full on the lips. That cord-like illusion that roped between them, the one connecting their thoughts, was no longer stretched when their faces were pressed together, and the static in the back of his thoughtstream cleared. Jeonghan’s lips felt like when water was so hot it started feeling cold, sending tickles up his spine and forcing him to break away before he was ready to.

 

Under the dim yellowish lightbulbs and despite Jeonghan’s gross coffee breath, and despite their noses bonking a little when they both went in for the kiss, it felt as close to perfect as anything. They both rubbed their nose-bridges and mumbled into their hands when they finally broke apart.

 

His eyes might as well be replaced by those small heart-shaped chocolates, that was the way they looked when he was staring at Jisoo. Glistening like they might melt right out of the pupils’ boundaries and seep down his cheeks. “I didn’t know you had it in you,” he said slowly.

 

He had been holding his breath, and he let it out in one big sigh. “Neither did I.”

 

“Sorry ‘bout the coffee breath, by the way.”

 

“Yeah, it killed the romance,” Jisoo had recovered enough to tease him about it.

 

“I wasn’t aware there _was_ any romance.” People in movies didn’t look the way Jeonghan did right now after having their first kisses, but Jeonghan’s beauty might only be remarkable in Jisoo’s eyes, in a way that even the best-looking actor could never convey.

 

“Another kiss?”

 

Jisoo pushed his face away. “Go brush your teeth.”

 

“ _Pretty_ please?” Jeonghan puckered up and winked.

 

“What if your roommate walks in?”

 

“As long as we don’t go near his television,” he gestured at a clunky silver thing in the corner, antennae carefully duct-taped together, “I can do whatever the hell I want when he’s not here. And he has night classes, so kissing you is fine.”

 

They gravitated towards each other naturally, their noses brushing and their breaths tickling each other’s upper lips like feathers, but Jisoo pulled back right at the most tantalizing moment before their lips met. He didn’t mean to do that, but he remembered something. “But Jeonghan, what are we now?”

 

Jeonghan sighed and popped the ring from earlier off his finger, slipping it onto Jisoo’s ring finger and making him gasp. All like that, in one swift motion. “Married.”

 

“ _Are you serious?_ ”

 

“Dude, you can’t take a joke,” he pried the ring off and jammed it back down to his knuckle. “We’re definitely _not_ married as a result of being a thing now, marriage is stupid. No offence.”

 

“Phew.”

 

“I don’t know if I’m in love enough to share my blankets and pillows, anyway.” Jisoo smacked him on the shoulder- he could do that now without feeling quite so awkward. He was tentative, and it’d take him a while not to have robot-arm reflexes when trying to interact with Jeonghan, but he could flick his forehead, punch his arm, run his fingers through his hair, dust crumbs off his shirt like he’d been wanting to do after every dinner date of theirs… he could do it all now.

 

“Why don’t you stay for dinner? We can make Top Ramen and watch that new TV show, if cable works.”

 

“...I thought you said your roommate’s television was off-limits.”

 

“What he doesn’t know won’t harm him.”

 

“But wait, you didn’t answer my question earlier.” _We’re a “thing”?_

 

“I don’t know, we can be boyfriends, idiots, partners… if you must, “soulmates”,” he air-quoted sarcastically. “ _We’re whatever you want us to be, remember?_ ”

 

 

 _Stay still._ Jeonghan’s voice hissed into the other’s head, a pad of creamy white sketching paper resting on his knee and a blunt charcoal pencil in his right hand. He was uncomfortably perched on the edge of a grey mass of rocks, overlooking the crinkly, deep blue waters of Puget Sound’s bay. He was sketching Jisoo as he sat among the spring flowers, carefully twisting the wet green stems into his hair. It was so angelic, it probably made his heart swell, Jisoo was such a piece of art, et cetera, but Jisoo also moved a lot and he couldn’t stay in one pose for more than a half-second.

 

Jisoo mis-aimed a handful of picked-off daisy petals, intending to hit Jeonghan in the shoulder, but as anyone who has held a flower would know, petals float and therefore landed closer to Jisoo’s feet than Jeonghan’s face. The attempt made Jeonghan scoff, though.

 

“Don’t sketch me if it makes you cranky. My arms hurt from holding them like this.” He shifted a nano-centimeter in the _wrong_ direction, and Jeonghan hissed again. Like a cute, angry cat.

 

“Don’t pick flowers just to destroy them, boy,” Jeonghan answered.

 

“ _Boy?_ ”

 

“...friend. I guess.”

 

“Does he love me?” Jisoo teased, tilting his head back in the salty breeze. He threw a daisy petal in the wind, and picked off another from the flower he was currently preening in his hand. “Or does he love me not?”

 

“If _he_ didn’t love you _he_ wouldn’t be struggling to sketch you,” he bit his lip and shaded the under-eyes of his sketch. Tried capturing the soft dewiness of his skin and the way his hair resembled the grass in the wind, swaying and shivering and tangling in itself, and the upturned corners of his full pink lips. “Now stay still or I’ll let the cougars eat you.”

 

Jisoo laughed and completely disregarded the threat by getting up and walking over to Jeonghan to feed him the other half of his now-cold slice of pepperoni pizza. This outing was supposed to be a hike, since they had a weekend off and they had been cooped up studying or stressing about their grades. Jisoo bought two pizzas and Jeonghan drove, and they spent a total of five minutes on the trail before they agreed they were too tired to continue and flopped down in the grass over here to eat and rest.

 

He sat next to him, tucking his chin into Jeonghan’s shoulder so he could see the drawing. It looked nothing like Jisoo in the sense that he made him look so much more beautiful than he actually did. “I think it’d be more fun if you ate me,” he responded.

 

“Please stop trying to flirt.”

 

He went beet red. “Would you believe me if I told you that was supposed to be innocent?”

 

“Well, no, but your cheeks are on fire so I’ll rest my case.”

 

He went redder still. “ _Ugh, damn it._ ”

 

Jeonghan leaned in closed and pecked Jisoo’s jawline until he got a laugh out of him. His kisses felt like the velvety backs of flower petals, soft and ghostly like they’d floated in the breeze and pressed against his cheek, a feeling he would press into a book page if he could, to preserve and remember forever. And they tickled, too, because every time they touched each other (even something as simple as lacing their fingers together) it felt like Jisoo’s skin was a lit match and Jeonghan’s was cold water.

 

They hadn’t been anywhere near third-base territory yet, and that was why they were both still so weird about it. They had hugged, kissed, and gone on dates, but that was where they drew the invisible line.

 

Jeonghan was beginning to calmly rip his sketch in half.

 

“It was so nice! Why?”

 

“It’s nothing new, check out my sketchbook.” He slid the book over with his foot. Besides creamy, empty pages that hadn’t yet been filled in, the metal wiring had hooks of paper left from all the other ripped-out pages, and no actual sketches to display. They were all demolished.

 

“You self-destruct when you don’t like the results, which is…”

 

“Always. Yeah.” The paper was in fourths now.

 

“What an artist. Didn’t that one dude cut his ear off because he was so miserable with the way his paintings were turning out?”

 

“Van Gogh?” The drawing was in eighths, and little rips were fluttering out of his palms.

 

“Yeah, him.”

 

“He got in a fight with some other artist dude… _art history_ , Jisoo. But anyway, I’m happy keeping my body intact, only the papers get destroyed.”

 

“These ears are staying.” Jisoo pinched them and ran his fingers through the dangly silver earrings, and Jeonghan nestled down until he was lying with his head in Jisoo’s lap, and he was delicately braiding flowers into his Magpie’s nest of hair, yellow daisies and blood-purple foxgloves and Queen Anne’s Lace tucked behind his ear as a makeshift hair pin, so busy with his work that he didn’t notice the sky darkening and thundering in the distance, the birds squawking and nestling into the trees.

 

“Do you ever wanna run away?”

 

“Huh? Is this about studying for midterms again?”

 

“Nah. Like do you ever want to pack up and take your car and like, _leave._ Live off your savings and whatever money you can make on the road, sleep in the trunk in a disused campsite or something.”

 

“Well, I have thought of that once,” Jisoo answered honestly. “It still sounds like a good idea. But I guess it’s better in theory than in execution.”

 

“I guess.”

 

“How did you start thinking of this, though?”

 

“Just another one of my shitty ideas.”

 

“It’s not shitty, we should do it someday.” Jeonghan seemed pleased, but he didn’t say it just to see a smile on his face. He meant it.

 

“Could _you_ handle Kraft mac’n’cheese cooked to crisps over a woodfire for dinner, momma’s boy?”

 

Smack. Jeonghan winced and rubbed his forehead, but they both laughed loudly, obnoxiously even. “I’d scrape my bowl clean if I were with you. Enough picking on me, though.”

 

A fat, cold raindrop landed on Jeonghan’s cheek. He shivered and sighed. “I knew the sun wouldn’t last.”

 

“Our car is all the way down there, remember?” He steered Jeonghan’s head gently so he could see their ant-sized car, parked on the end of a dirt road rather far below them. “That’s like 30 minutes away if we run, it’ll be pouring by then.” _And we both know_ you _refuse to even stretch your legs._

 

 _Fuck._ “I mean, you can have my jacket if you get cold. Or wet.” _It can’t be_ that _bad._

 

“I’d be more concerned about you catching a cold in that scenario.”

 

“What kind of an idiot am I, letting us go out on a day like today?” Thunder rumbled on cue once again, like that first day they met in the parking lot. Jisoo would humour both of them and say something about how they seemed to attract the purplest of stormclouds whenever they were outdoors, but it was Washington after all and he doubted they had anything to do with it. He _hoped_ they didn’t have anything to do with it.

 

“I _told_ you the weather forecast-”

 

“When does the weather forecast _not_ call for rain-”

 

They chewed up each other’s sentences uselessly, the raindrops falling harder and faster around them.

 

“Eh, worst case scenario, we die of pneumonia,” Jeonghan resolved, settling back into his arms and letting him continue braiding weeds and petals into his hair. The rain was pelting Jisoo’s back now, but he was perfectly okay with it somehow. It seemed like his boyfriend (he stopped himself from seeming too giddy about calling Jeonghan his _boyfriend_ ) was finally impressing his too-nonchalant-to-care lifestyle on Jisoo.

 

“I love you.”

 

Jeonghan scoffed. “Are those supposed to be your last words?”

 

“No, I just do. And for the record, we’re not going to die because of a freaking thunderstorm.”

 

 

They _didn’t_ die, but neither of them were sure how alive they were the next morning either. That _might_ be because of the brink-of-death colds they were suffering through, but they were both far too stubborn to admit it and treated the colds like a total coincidence. Not a result of sitting in the rain until even their socks were soaked and driving home on the freeway with the windows rolled down.

 

_Ugh, headache._

 

 _...everything tastes like cardboard._ Even Jeonghan’s canned inner-voice sounded stuffy.

 

 _Guess I’ll have to skip class today,_ thought Jeonghan, and for someone so sick he sounded suspiciously pleased about his day being freed up.

 

 _You’re amazing, Yoon Jeonghan,_ Jisoo wasn’t sure if it traveled through; they’d been getting better at communicating coherently, but they still couldn’t have anything near a full conversation mentally. Anyway, words still drowned in and out of focus, like he was sending voice messages from a phone booth in the deepest trenches of the ocean.

 

_Anyone in their right mind would rather be chained to their bed than go to a fucking morning class._

 

To lure Jeonghan over when he saw him walking back to his dorm with a bottle of decongestant pills in one hand, he subtly mentioned that he could make a mean chicken noodle soup (a lie), and that his roommate was gone for four days because he was playing at a national football game in another state (a truth).

 

“You sure I can stay the night?” He asked nervously, messing with the blue fleece blanket he had thrown over his shoulders. He was taking the dorm in, walking in a loop around the place and peering through doors and out windows and into fridges, because it was the first time Jisoo had invited him around, or so much as let him into the place. “I mean, “beefhead” isn’t gonna show up early or something?”

 

The mention of his roommate felt like someone was tickling the back of his neck with cold, spindly fingers. “I think we’re okay. I can hide you in the closet, if he surprises us.”

 

“Ah, some more time spent in there.” It took Jisoo a while to get that one, but he laughed as hard as his sickness allowed him once he did.

 

“Wow, you actually make your bed.” He did these things without asking- falling onto Jisoo’s bed and cuddling up to his pillow- like they were both one and it was as much his bed as it was Jisoo’s. “And it smells like,” he bunched up the blankets and rubbed them against his cheeks, “you.”

 

“Um, weirdo. What’d you expect my sheets to smell like?”

 

He held his arms open. “C’mere, I’m sick and we need to share body heat to survive.”

 

Jisoo sighed and climbed onto his bed and into his open embrace, curling into the sickly warmth coming off his body in waves. “For the millionth time, _we’re_ _not going to die.”_

 

“So. This roommate of yours.”

 

Jisoo tugged on Jeonghan’s hoodie drawstrings and grimaced. “What about him?”

 

“What does he do? Why do you hate him so much?”

 

Jisoo started. “Ugh. He’s filthy, loud, he reeks, he throws parties on weeknights, he eats my food, not to mention that he and his football team tried giving me a “welcome” swirly when I first got here.”

 

Jeonghan furrowed his eyebrows. “Yikes.”

 

“He curses like a sailor-”

 

“But I do that,” Jeonghan interrupted.

 

“It’s _different_ when it’s you. I thought you’d have known that by now.” Jeonghan closed his eyes once again and nestled back into his niche, gesturing for Jisoo to continue with his rant.

 

“He brings a new girlfriend around every week and he’s called me… not nice names before, for no reason.”

 

“If I were you I’d have probably killed him and made it look like an accident a long time ago.”

 

“Yeah, well, patience is a good thing sometimes. I guess.” Jisoo propped up on his elbow and sighed through his nose. “Now I’m angry.”

 

“But I love it when you get mad.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because you finally grow a spine. Like, I bet you could _actually_ punch someone right now.” He hesitated, and then whispered, “And you look pretty good when you’re annoyed.” He lifted their two hands, entwined into one, and flexed them out to block the light bulb flares clouding up his vision.

 

Jisoo cupped Jeonghan’s jaw and tilted his head up so their lips could meet as comfortably as possible in their snuggled-up state. The kisses burned, as they always did, and Jisoo’s fingertips were just hot and prickly enough to leave a lingering feeling as he brushed them over his exposed skin.

 

Time stretched when their foreheads were pressed together, shutting the buzzing and the thought exchange off and allowing them to rest as a two-piece puzzle that’d finally been connected. Their limbs were clumsily sprawled and woven into each other’s, the radiator blew hot dust onto the rug, and the attempted soup grew cold on the stove, the chopsticks and bowls and muddy vegetable skins waiting to be washed and cleaned out of the sink.

 

Jisoo woke up at some time around sunset and tried snaking out of Jeonghan’s arms without disturbing him to take a much-needed shower- he was still in the same sweater and corduroys from yesterday’s “hike”, and his hair stuck to his sweaty forehead.

 

He found Jeonghan quietly undressing behind him while the bathroom filled with steam and clouded things into a hazy, dream-like state. The smell of shampoo rinsed a layer of fatigue down the drain. His fingers found their way, naturally, combing through the other boy’s hair, caressing his chest and collarbones. Maybe it was good everything was shrouded by the lethargic yellow-coloured lens of sickness, because he’d never have been brave enough to do these things if he were healthy and one-hundred percent _there_.

 

He gave Jeonghan his favourite pajamas to borrow, and they found their way, whether by waltzing slowly, tripping over things on the floor and sneezing onto each other, or whatever else, back onto the bed to plant lazy, red-hot kisses and whisper ticklish nonsense into each other’s ears. It felt so intimate, but it felt so natural too, like this was what they were supposed to be doing all along in life.

 

 

 _Noise._ Loud noise nibbling at the edges of his deep sleep, coming close to waking him but not close enough. He assumed it was an alarm clock, a roommate from down the hall, maybe even Jisoo getting up to make them some coffee and breakfast. But wait, no, he could still feel the soft, warm weight of Jisoo’s limbs tangled in his under the blankets. He can still feel his hot breath on the back of his neck.

 

Jisoo’s bedroom door slammed open, the door-knob crashing into the wall and probably denting it. It was enough sound to jolt Jeonghan awake, and Jisoo was already untangling himself thanks to his fast reflexes. They can both hardly open their eyes, sickness and tiredness and the happiness of a warm, cuddly lay-in still lifting off of them. The room was still dark, the curtains were drawn, and neither of them were sure who opened the door yet.

 

The lights were switched on, harsh artificial bulbs making it even harder for them to blink the drowsiness away. Jeonghan was wiping the sleep dust out of the corners of his eyes, but he thought he can make out a tall, hefty shadow, breathing loudly.

 

Jisoo was already standing, swaying a little from the speed at which he jumped out of bed, the blood still rushing into his head after the adrenaline had forced him up. “What- what- what are you doing here?” He asked.

 

“What the fuck’d I tell you’d happen if I came back and found you choking on some dick in _my_ dorm?”

 

Jeonghan’s vision wasn’t as blurry now. Who he only assumed was Jisoo’s roommate was standing in the doorway, fists clenched and a travel duffel slung over his shoulder. Jisoo erupted into angry redness, ears and cheeks and neck. “It’s a university dorm. I can have friends over if you can.”

 

“Oh, friends? That’s what we call _this_?” He gestured at Jeonghan and laughed. Jeonghan’s brain was still far too slow to catch up on what was happening, and he hated it. “Since he’s nothing but a friend, I guess a broken nose won’t matter to you.”

 

Jisoo stood up, and Jeonghan did too. They were both dwarfed by Scholarship Jock, but they might as well try to get out. Jeonghan didn’t really understand why he barged into the room or seemed to know that he would be in the room, or why he even cared what Jisoo was doing, but he also thought he understood the situation too well. His stomach felt like it was being squeezed.

 

“Why do you even care?” Jisoo glanced at Jeonghan, eyebrows knitted and fists balled. Neither of them knew what the fuck was happening, but they were both ready for the worst.

 

“I want you and your pillow-biter out. You don’t belong with normal people.” He rolled his sleeves up, almost comically. He seemed to have readied himself for this moment where he’d get to cream Jisoo, and Jisoo had no idea what he’d had against him all year. “I shouldn’t be sharing this dorm with…” he couldn’t even complete a sentence without forgetting his point halfway through. He was pathetic and stupid, and terrifying. “People like you.”

 

 _Get out._ Jeonghan’s voice struggled through.

 

You _get out. I can deal with him._ They exchanged looks, very briefly. _I’m not going to fight him, it’s just that you have nothing to do with this._

 

“Step away from the doorway, uh, _please,”_ Jeonghan asked. His voice was shaky, but not the scared kind. More like he was struggling to keep his anger under control and deal with the freak-situation calmly. It felt like any minute now, a black-and-white movie clapperboard would descend from the sky and declare “cut!”, that the scene was over and they could move on with their lives. It was either a bad dream or they were actors in a movie, but whatever it was, it didn’t feel real. Despite that, they both knew was that they were in danger whatever situation this was, since Scholarship Jock’s threats weren’t empty.

 

“‘ _Please’._ What a fai-”

 

“So this is how it has to be?” Jeonghan asked, unfazed, and Jisoo didn’t know if it was because his adrenaline hadn’t kicked in yet or if he really wasn’t afraid. He pulled a pocketknife out of his hoodie pocket, and Jock’s eyes widened, but he collected his face back into a jutted-jaw, shit-eating expression almost immediately. At this point, Jisoo stopped understanding what was happening.

 

“Step away from the doorway, dickhead,” Jeonghan warned, sliding around through the doorframe and sprinting down the hall and out the dorm door.

 

Jisoo felt that familiar wave of coldness, the trickle down his neck, at Jeonghan’s disappearance. He knew he’d _asked_ him to leave so he could deal with the mess without worrying about Jeonghan getting into it, but he felt weaker, and frankly, like a part of him, the rational, unafraid, unembarrassed part of him was gone. He kept his fists clenched, thumbs tucked into his palms so he was ready to deflect punches. “What the fuck is your problem?”

 

“You’re disgusting. You don’t belong with normal people.” He repeated. “No one’s smeared your face before, huh?”

 

Jisoo gulped and instinctively raised a hand to shield his face. He hadn’t seen anything like this in his life, but something told him it wasn’t the first time. Something told him Jeonghan had acted so swiftly because he might have been in Jisoo’s boots before, receiving the hatred. All he could really coherently think of now was how to avoid getting killed or sucker-punched, though.

 

_Jisoo. Jisoo. Listen. Knee him in the balls if you have to. I’m coming back with an RA or someone as fast as I can._

 

 _Okay._ Jisoo didn’t know how he felt about a resident assistant getting in the middle of this. He’d be blamed for everything, of course. And his parents would know, and he’d probably get kicked out of university or something. But the strangest split-second thought was when he realized that he didn’t care about any of the above as long as he was somewhere far away and safe with Jeonghan. No, he couldn’t afford to have thoughts like that right now because he wasn’t safe, he was still in the heat of the mess.

 

“Why do you think breaking down a closed door is-” he started.

 

“Shut the fuck up.”

 

Jock made a grab for his neck, clawing at his sweatshirt collar and attempting to wrap his hand around it, right as Jeonghan and the resident assistant rounded the corner.

 

 

“ _Evicted?_ ” Jeonghan, not one for loud exclamations, had stopped in the middle of a crosswalk and just about yelled twenty minutes earlier, forcing Jisoo, the one actually _being_ _evicted,_ to tell him to stop overreacting and drag him out of the middle of a busy city intersection. They sat in the booth of a coffee shop now, and Jeonghan repeated the same one-word question, demanding an elaboration.

 

“Yeah. He filed a complaint and they decided I must’ve been at fault somehow.”

 

“But he was literally trying to kill you even in front of us,” he fumed. “All we were doing was sharing a bed… and while the fucker was out of state, no less.”

 

“Here, read this paper I got in the mail yesterday.” Jisoo fished around in his hoodie pocket, bringing out a paper soft and crumbly from Jisoo nervously rolling it up into a ball in his fist and then straightening it out every time he read it.

 

“ _The scumbag had his hands around your neck, Jisoo._ ”

 

Jisoo groped around under the table until he caught hold of the hand Jeonghan had in his lap. They couldn’t hold hands above, on the tabletop, because store management and other customers would probably complain. “I’m not even that upset, calm down.”

 

It all felt settled into place, like that was supposed to happen and he had been expecting Jock’s teasing to amount to something after all those months. He was hardly upset anymore- but maybe that was Jisoo being his usual patient, passive self, maybe because Jeonghan was still with him and that was all that really mattered.

 

Jeonghan slumped far down his seat, a childishly angry action, and sucked half his cup of tea down in one go, a stream of watery gold rushing up his straw.

 

He rubbed the back of his neck. “This isn’t the first time things like this have happened, huh.”

 

“Oh, sweet, naive Jisoo. You wouldn’t know, would you?” Jeonghan ripped a tissue into pieces, rolling them carefully into small balls and lining them up on an edge of the round cafe table. “It doesn’t even have to do with how many times it has happened to people. It’s still unfair.”

 

Thinking back, Jeonghan was hardly fazed once he woke up and realized what had been happening, and he successfully burrowed his way out of the situation and brought intervention in. Jisoo, meanwhile, was numb and confused… the thought of Jeonghan being so experienced at dealing with it was depressing.

 

Jeonghan slammed the cup down on the table, waves and tea-spray sloshing around in the cup. The table shook slightly. “Since you won’t take another roomie and I can’t kick mine out, what are you thinking of doing?”

 

“Uh. I mean, I _know_ what I’m doing.” Jisoo hoped Jeonghan didn’t mind the sweat pooling into his palms.

 

Jeonghan squeezed his hand. “Spill.”

 

“Okay. So. Don’t worry, and don’t freak out, but I’m actually just going to ditch uni,” he half-whispered. Jisoo averted his eyes and watched a businessman holding a leather briefcase run across the busy intersection, because he didn’t really want to witness Jeonghan’s reaction.

 

“You- oh fuck, wait _what_?” Jeonghan choked on his drink, eyes reddening in the effort it took not to spit it all over the table. This was the fourth time he’d made Jeonghan choke on coffee in their relatively short time knowing each other.

 

Jisoo had been thinking about it ever since that time Jeonghan mentioned running away and camping out somewhere together, when they were up hiking, and a silly conversation was about to become an even sillier reality. To him, it seemed like everything was falling into place and practically urging him to take this path. Since he and Jeonghan could already communicate telepathically, dropping out of school, lying to his parents, and camping out in the backseat of said _soulmate_ ’s car wasn’t much weirder. Right?

 

“I’ve decided. I wanna go on an adventure.” He breathed. “Will you come with?”

 

“ _What?”_ He clutched at his chest, looking at Jisoo like he was absolutely insane, or possessed. Jisoo didn’t blame him; maybe he _was_ insane and possessed. “Dude, are you okay?”

 

“Peachy. Will you come with?”

 

“What about your parents? Your job as a doctor or whatever?”

 

“My parents don’t need to know,” Jisoo said coolly, but he was gnawing at the insides of his cheeks and praying Jeonghan didn’t actually peg him as insane and walk out on him.

 

“You’ve really changed. What happened to you.” Jeonghan got up and slid into Jisoo’s side of the booth, feeling at the top of his head, fingers prying through his hair. “No bruises? So you didn’t fall and hit your head.”

 

_Way to exaggerate, Yoon Jeonghan. I’m still Jisoo._

 

_I don’t know about that._

 

Jisoo lifted his mug of hot chocolate, large and red ceramic and topped with marshmallows and whipped cream, to hide his face. “I won’t really have a car otherwise anyway, and I’d have to go camping alone, take a bunch of buses up to a national park.” He sipped. “Cougars could eat me. I would be lonely and cold.”

 

Jeonghan narrowed his eyes, the faintest semblance of a smile on his lips. That was good. “Are you… guilting _me?_ Manipulating _me?”_

 

Jisoo hid his face even further behind the mug. “...maybe.”

 

“What the fuck has happened to you.” Jeonghan planted a hard kiss on his cheek.

 

He looked around shyly, looking from face to face in the other booths and at the front counter to make sure no one had seen. He still got very shy at any kind of physical affection, and if that didn’t tell Jeonghan that he was still the same old Jisoo, nothing did. “I love you,” Jisoo said.

 

 _Well_ I _don’t._ Not even a split-second after, Jeonghan said, “Should I start packing as soon as we get back on campus?”

 

 

Long, coastline-skimming highways, metal rails shining in the sun, gulls playing in the wind, waves crashing into the jutting-rock cliff edges. Music flowed like silk (slowly and elegantly) out of the rusty old radio, and Jeonghan pointed out lyrics, about shyness stopping people from experiencing life fully, and recited them in silly sing-song until Jisoo laughed and smacked his arm. The sunroof was only jammed shut when Jisoo complained his toes were frozen, or when they saw rain on the weather forecast on the 7/11’s clunky wall-mounted televisions. Wild coastlines merged into foggy redwood forests, tall and imposing and shady even on a sunny day.

 

“Where do I drive us?” Jeonghan had said as he buckled his seatbelt, two days after they’d collectively lost their marbles and decided to become rogue dropouts.

 

Jisoo thought, and Jeonghan waited patiently. They were learning from each other, merging into each other, sharing traits; Jisoo was cheekier and more outspoken, Jeonghan more patient and thoughtful. “Do you know any nice campsites… far from where we are now?” Jisoo finally asked.

 

“I might know a place.”

 

It was an emptied clearing a few miles into some forest Jisoo didn’t know the name of, sprigs of herb and flower growing between rocks and charred circles of dirt signifying that other people had built fires here recently. Jeonghan told him it was the same campsite his parents took him to at least once every summer, and it was usually full of trailer houses and small children running around in bathing suits while their parents grilled dinner. He also mentioned that it had been used as a male summer camp in the 1960s, because there was a lake surrounded by the bones of old wooden cabins nearby.

 

The fire had been hard to start the first time, but Jeonghan’s lighter and a few old college papers did their job as kindling. They bought a tiny red pot at some roadside shop to cook their lunches, the first few of which ended up blackened and stuck to the inside of the pot, because Jeonghan couldn’t properly control the fire’s temperature. He did eat Jisoo’s dinner and tell him it was a wonderful meal, unsarcastically.

 

They attempted to fish, using a makeshift snare (as Jisoo had been taught at summer camp when he was twelve) and some leftover rice from breakfast, but all they accomplished was wetting their socks and the knees-down of their pants and losing the snare to a particularly large fish dragging it away as it bit the bait.

 

 

 _He doesn’t even look like himself here._ In Jisoo’s hand was a dated picture of Jeonghan, something he found in a small yellow box Jeonghan had brought out of the trunk for them to look through. It was full of pictures of Jeonghan growing up, one where his hands were blurry mid-dribble as he bounced a basketball across a court, another where he was a toddler posed in a baseball cap and a too-large leather jacket that probably belonged to his father.

 

Jisoo looked back and forth from the picture to Jeonghan, who was reading a book beside him, eye-corners crinkled and finger worrying at his lip in concentration. Their shoulders brushed when Jeonghan put down the book and leaned over to make a grab for the picture. That thought must’ve come through to him. “ _Ugh_ , this one.”

 

“You look good, just… different. Your eyes were different.” He was dressed in oversized hand-me-downs and his hair was hardly past his ears, but his eyes looked darker and puffier, brown but not the lively, melted-chocolate brown they were nowadays. He could also almost see worry lines on his forehead, but the picture quality was too shitty to confirm.

 

 _You’re dangerously observant and attentive._ “What was different about them?”

 

“Uh… they look kinda dead on the inside. You looked exhausted, but not like, just-ran-a-marathon exhausted. I guess it’s like... emotional exhaustion?”

 

“Damn. Wow.” He whistled. “Yeah, I don’t seem to wear depression as well as some people do.”

 

“You were… depressed?” Jisoo wouldn’t have gathered that on his own- he was observant, but boy, was he clueless at the same time.

 

“High school isn’t a walk in the park for a poor immigrant.” He laughed, probably a way to brush off the memories as they came back to him or to distract from his eyes looking droopier, crinkled and fragile, all of a sudden. He’d seen it before, happening on people when they got emotional but tried their hardest to keep the tears or the voice cracks or the facial expressions veiled. His eyes looked as thin as the microscope slide cover-slips at the lab, the kind that if pinched hard enough between two fingers fell apart in shards. “See those panda eyes? I can assure you my parents were shitty and they didn’t care about what happened to me at school, but they weren’t the ones that made those bruises.” He jabbed a finger at his younger-self’s preserved face and chuckled.

 

“Hey, man. I shouldn’t have asked.” Jisoo tucked the picture back into the box and lidded it. “If you want to talk, it’s cool, but I don’t want to upset you.”

 

“What makes you think I’m upset?” He looked up at the treetops.

 

 _Oh, okay, he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore._ It sounded utterly selfish, but Jisoo wasn’t sure how supportive and gentle he would seem listening to and digesting Jeonghan’s stories, so he was kind of glad he wasn’t being told any of them. It hurt him too much to listen to any hardships he’d gone through before Jisoo was there to comfort him, so he preferred to be blissfully ignorant and a (hopefully) supportive presence in Jeonghan’s life nowadays. _Hopefully_. If not, they were fucked over, because all they had were each other, a broken porcelain piggy bank and a hardly-running car.

 

“Do _you_ have any pretty-boy Jisoo pictures to share?”

 

“Uh, they’re all at home with my mom, but I might have a good, funny one in my wallet.” He brought it out, a self-taken picture of him sitting inside of a basketball hoop like one would lie in a pool float. It was his senior year stunt, harmless and innocent and everything anyone expected the class-clown and nerd to do. It made for a good cheering-up story, too. Humour was the best way to bring the tension back down and hide from reality a little, it always had been for him. When someone wanted to punch him, he’d just crack a non-offensive joke and emerge without any broken teeth.

 

“Did you have any friends in high school, Jisoo?”

 

“Nope. How about you?”

 

“No. By society’s standards, that means you’re a fuckin’ loser.” Jeonghan stuck his tongue out.

 

“So are you by that logic, you dumbass.” Jeonghan threw his hands around his neck, cold metal bracelets and the electric heat of Jeonghan’s touch jolting him, pressing his lips against his and only pausing to nip softly at his jaw and collarbones.

 

 

Jisoo woke up to the sound of rain like bullet shells on the metal of the car roof. It was cold in the car- you could see your breath almost as clearly as if you were exhaling cigarette smoke- but Jeonghan’s body was warm underneath him. They had taken to cuddling on the backseat every night, since they hadn’t brought sleeping bags, and Jisoo was usually asleep _on_ Jeonghan because he said he liked being smothered to sleep, and that Jisoo’s body was warm. They had that ratty blue-fleece blanket of Jeonghan’s thrown over them.

 

He could feel Jeonghan’s heartbeat in his ear and against his cheek, under the ribbed fabric of the sweatshirt and the muscles of his torso.

 

They talked a lot last night, kissed and hugged and shed a few tears that they hoped the other didn’t see in the dark. When a conversation about high school and depression reached a very dead end, Jeonghan kissed Jisoo’s forehead and fell asleep. Or maybe rolled over and stayed awake, thinking, since Jisoo thought he’d distinctly heard Jeonghan winding his way down by counting up to ten and back down to zero repeatedly under his breath. One never knew with Jeonghan.

 

Jisoo looked up. Jeonghan was wide awake and watching him softly, his under-eyes a delicate, veiny purple and staticky hair stuck to his cheeks. The window his shoulders were propped up against was steamy, and it was covered with finger-drawn hearts and doodles, through which he could see slivers of dark-green trees outside.

 

_Hey._

 

“Good morning. Thunder wake you?”

 

“I don’t know, maybe.” He shifted into a more comfortable position. “Sleep well?”

 

“ _I don’t know, maybe._ ” Jisoo reiterated.

 

Jeonghan blinked lazily. “I’m lucky to have you.”

 

“Wha- where did this come from?”

 

He shrugged and said, “I’m cold,” arms held out to invite Jisoo to exchange body heat.

 

Jisoo complied, nuzzling up into his neck and rubbing circles into his hands. The tips of his fingers felt ice-capped.

 

“Should we drive somewhere to get some breakfast? A breakfast diner or something. French toast and bacon.”

 

“Sounds grand,” he answered distractedly, eyes glassy and trained on some random corner of the car because he was so faraway in thought.

 

“What are you thinking about?” Jisoo asked him curiously.

 

“I was thinking about… what do you live for, Jisoo? Like, what keeps you going?”

 

 _Oh. Um._ Saying he lived for Jeonghan sounded cheesy and unoriginal and the farthest thing from the truth, even if it very well could’ve been for Jisoo. He knew he didn’t live for his parents, or a degree, or a successful future. But this was all too complex and existential for his morning brain to really wrap around. He breathed into the fabric of his shirt. “What do _you_ live for?”

 

“Clever. Springing the question back on me.”

 

“I need to get some food in my system before I can think of a real answer. My stomach is _growling,_ can’t you hear it?”

 

“Of course. I didn’t expect you to answer now anyway… it would’ve seemed like some half-assed bullshit answer.” He took the keys out of his sweatshirt’s pocket and tucked them into Jisoo’s fist. “Here, you drive us there.”

 

 

A hearty breakfast buffet of poached eggs, french toast topped with cherry sauce and confectioner’s sugar, banana pancakes, and two cups of creamy coffee. They warmed their chapped faces by the roaring fireplace, and split the cost because Jeonghan insisted on _banning_ Jisoo from paying for everything.

 

“It’s looking pretty stormy out there. Are you sure you two boys don’t want a room for the night?” An older female waitress asked them as they paid in coins and crumpled dollars. The wind was blowing the sheets of rain sideways, and both wind and water leaked through the cracks in the glass windows, dripping and whistling even over the noise of all the people there.

 

“We’ll be fine. It’s nothing I haven’t driven through before,” Jeonghan responded confidently.

 

“Listen, I’m not trying to get you to stay here for business purposes. It’s looking pretty damn bad, and there were even news reports about the dangers of driving in this weather.”

 

_She’s totally trying to get us to rent a room and spend more money here._

 

“Ma’am, we’ll be fine. Like he said, it’s nothing the two of us can’t get through,” Jisoo glanced at Jeonghan and received a small nod.

 

“Alright, if you say so.” She tucked some pamphlets away under the desk, but her eyebrows were still furrowed. She was sweet, but they would be okay without the worry. “Drive safe.”

 

 

“You know that question I asked you earlier, that you asked me?”

 

“Hmm?” Jisoo mumbled, telling him to go on, he was listening.

 

Jeonghan kept his eyes on the road, one hand on the gear shift and the other drumming on the sticky leather steering wheel. His sharp profile, the gentle hook of his nose and heart-shaped lips and large feline eyes, reminded Jisoo of when he first saw him. The weather conditions were almost the same, that night when they met in the parking lot and he dropped him off at the dorms. The streaks of blue sky between violet clouds and yellow lightning, the moaning gale and patter of rain, everything seeming surreal because of being caught in the brief period between day and night. It was a perfectly mirrored image of that tonight.

 

“I guess I live to, to see what happens next. To you. To me. Us. The world as we know it; I wouldn’t want to miss that.”

 

Jeonghan looked at him after a few minutes. “Aren’t you gonna respond?”

 

“I didn’t think it needed an answer.” He opened the glovebox and rummaged through the Sharpie-labelled cassettes until he found the one he was seeking, pushing it into the cassette player. He then rested his hand over Jeonghan’s on the gear-shift.

 

And maybe, just maybe, if they had had the radio on and not some old rock music, they’d have heard the secondary warning about the storm _really_ blowing in overnight, and how no one should attempt to drive without chains on their tires unless they had a death wish. How it was really much better if Seattle citizens tucked in somewhere for the night.

 

If they cared, if they weren’t so oblivious and carefree and stubborn, _maybe_ they would’ve pulled over and slept the rest of the night off and saved themselves. Their car, the only thing for miles in either direction, sped down the freeway and into the pitch-black night ahead of them, even the glowing red tail-lights getting lost in the fog.

 

 

_and if a ten ton truck kills the both of us,_

_to die by your side, well the pleasure, the privilege is mine._

  
**END**


	2. Vernon and Seungkwan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: relatively non-violent incidences of kidnapping, and parallels to child trafficking/slavery. prosthetic limbs and brief mentions of blood.

 

_2101_

 

A Hawaiian shirt in a crowd of leather jackets. Seungkwan always found this particular boy amusing to watch, if not for his clothing choices for the way he hovered on the fringe. Able to see the game and the very middle of the rink, but similarly able to dart right out the front door and away from any trouble. He came once, maybe twice a week, and stood stiff as a scarecrow, a few inches shorter than the people around him, silently observing.

 

Seungkwan would watch him out of the corner of his eye as he gave people change for their fifty-dollar bills so they could bet some more, sometimes even grab an apron and a serving tray and pretend to be one of the waitresses, just so he could ask him if he wanted a drink and get a chance to talk to him. The boy paid him no mind, and refused refreshments every time. It was still worth it to force a few words out of him, even if Seungkwan’s boss hissed at him later that night for taking over someone else’s job.

 

He came to watch people gamble and bet and pit self-built robots against each other in a small fighting rink surrounded by the drunks of San Fransokyo’s slums, eager for entertainment and the bloody fight that was bound to happen if a mob boss lost a large sum of money. Maybe Seungkwan was interested in him specifically because he was the only other young boy he’d seen in this lowly, refurbished dumpster of a place in _years._

 

Seungkwan followed him home once. He wasn’t pleased about being a borderline stalker, but it wasn’t like he ever intended to hurt the boy. No, he was so fascinated by seeing a similarly small, fresh face in a sea of wrinkly, yellow-toothed _geezers,_ that he would’ve gone the literal extra mile to see him home safely, if not for his leg already compelling him to follow. Seungkwan’s leg- not the skin-and-bones one, the copper-and-silver one- was weirdly magnetized to Vernon. He almost dropped his tray the first time Vernon came around, because his mechanical leg had done a 180 and tried following the boy as he walked in the opposite direction.

 

Seungkwan thought that maybe there was some metal in his leg that was attracted to the steel-toed boots Vernon wore, or maybe he owned one of those high-tech devices and it was attracted to that, too. Either way, it beat him why it behaved like that around Vernon, but one day he decided to act on it instead of resisting and let his left leg take the lead. He always stayed within hiding distance and practically skulked, careful not to bend his knee so the metal joints wouldn’t whir and pop and echo up the alley, watching the other boy’s mousy brown hair bob and bounce from a safe distance. He was his late afternoon shadow, stretched and warped and trailing many meters behind him, but always there to follow his every footstep.

 

Vernon didn’t notice (bless him, he was so oblivious) and Seungkwan knew he was far out of his league. Vernon probably lived in one of those ridiculously expensive and ridiculously _ancient_ (400-year-old!) Victorian townhouses overlooking the bay and the cherry red bridge. He had tiny earpods, the kind Seungkwan saw on a giant neon billboard once that said they played music (which explained why Vernon didn’t notice or hear anyone following him at all), and he absently tinkered with screws and bolts and a tiny portable screwdriver while the cable car zipped up and down hills.

 

His house turned out to be exactly as Seungkwan had predicted.

 

 

_4:53 AM_

 

Vernon was huddled over the bot he was building, gently prying around, trying to hook the wires together and get it up and running so he could download data into it off his computer. His desk lamp was still on, probably the only window in the entire city with a faint light still shining from it, but it wasn’t like he cared. Since when did sleep matter, anyway? He pushed stray locks of very overgrown hair out of his face and continued poking at it.

 

He had been going to the slums despite his mother’s warnings never to go near red light districts, to try and gather “inspiration” for this thing from observing professional bot-fighters and their little devils. Granted, many of their robots weren’t handmade- bought or won off someone else- but each was so different from the other, and each had such _cool_ special features and customizations. Vernon wanted to make his own just for the fun of it.

 

He had six mugs lined up, half-emptied and covered with a layer of settled dust from being on the desk all day. He didn’t refill his old cups in his mad rush to hydrate himself, but brought a new one out of the cupboard until he ran out and had to make his kitchen robot wash all his apartment dishes in one go. The computer had twenty-five unopened holographic messages, probably from his mother and his old school friends, but no force in the world could make him open them. Too awkwardly affectionate and interactive for his taste. The house was in a state of silent, eerie, lived-in disarray at all times, but especially at times like these- he glanced down at his watch habitually, hoping it would give him the time instead of the endless ticking and incoherent numbers.

 

It was a relatively simple design, touch-screen and hardly cool enough to be a modern invention, but considering it was the first thing he’d ever built from scratch by himself and that he was five when he made it, it was fairly impressive. It was also waterproof, which meant it had been glued to his wrist for the past ten years of his life, even through showers and rainy weather. But he fucked it up somewhere on that timeline, because it only read one thing now and it wasn’t the time. One day he woke up and it read nothing but a very long number winding down slowly. At this point it had ticked through the brunt of that and lately, it even began scaring him. Last Sunday, he noticed that it said there were only five days left. Five days left until _what_ , exactly? Was Vernon getting his own predicted death-date?

 

Tonight Vernon came dangerously close to chucking it out the window into the bushes. It had only a few hours left on it, and besides the stress of not being able to properly fit some internal parts of the robot without having to re-weld the exterior shell, having something make an annoyingly loud, resonating tick on his wrist constantly made his blood curdle. He had put up with it for years, but tonight he was impatient and admittedly a little scared of what would happen when it hit zero minutes, zero seconds. He estimated that would be around 5:00 AM.

 

_4:58 AM_

 

He ran as hard and fast as his body could carry him. He could only hope his mechanical leg wouldn’t give out on him and fall right off its hinges as he sprinted to freedom- quite literally. He didn’t slow down even when his chest felt like someone was simultaneously lighting his lungs on fire and making him breathe dry ice, even when he could see static-y rainbows in his vision. Seungkwan hadn’t run in years, so to say he was out of shape was an understatement, but it was fucking sad that a fifteen-year-old couldn’t make it _down_ a hill without having to hide behind a trashcan to wheeze some air back into his lungs.

 

Seungkwan hadn’t seen a sunrise in many, many years either, but he didn’t have the time to stop and admire it now, although he was vaguely aware of the world lighting up around him, the cold blue buildings defrosting in the earliest rays of sunshine. The thick layer of white fog was dissipating as the sky lightened, but it still gave off a hazy hue as it curled around the orange paper lanterns that hung from the streetlights. His face looked red because of the haze, if not from exhaustion or the flush of adrenaline.

 

If this escape plan worked, he would wake to see other dawns and not regret missing this one too much. Even if it was his first dawn as a hopefully-free boy.

 

“I can hear you breathing, subhuman,” his boss growled, footsteps echoing loudly on the empty road. “No one escapes a blood pact, not even smart-ass flaws in the system like you.”

 

Maybe Seungkwan wasn’t the most mature fifteen-year-old out there. Maybe he was too sassy for his own good. And maybe he knew both these things about himself, but it didn’t stop him from doing what he did next. He jumped out from behind the trashcan and stuck his tongue out, yelling incoherent curses that felt _so_ good as he pelted off at full-speed. “Fuck that! Fuck it all! Fuck you! I’ve got too long a life ahead of me to stay around and work off some bullshit pact!”

 

“Aaagh!” His boss chased after him, one hand rummaging in his back pocket for the small pistol he usually kept in there. Seungkwan had always hoped he’d accidentally sit on the trigger while the gun was loaded and shoot himself in the ass, but alas, it never happened. “If I had my gun, you would be mine!”

 

Where was he going? He didn’t know. Seungkwan was letting his leg lead him like it was a second brain, which probably wasn’t wise. He didn’t have time to be wise because he’d be dead meat, so he had to trust the intelligence of this thing to lead him someplace safe.

 

“I don’t have anymore limbs for you to shoot off! I don’t-don’t-don’t think so!” Seungkwan’s voice cracked and hiccuped, sounding almost autotuned, as he yelled out a distraction. He reached the bottom of the hill without hurtling into the side-rails, and drifted sideways down a smaller street. It was a familiar cul-de-sac, one of the only places he knew in the city, since he was hardly ever off work to really know his way around. He was unable to think straight, letting his leg carry him somewhere and hoping his adrenaline didn’t give way to his malnutrition.

 

From this little corner he could see the sprawling city right as the sun began pouring light into it, high green hills dotted with both paper lanterns and traditional European street-lamps, and floating blimps advertising Japanese products tethered to building roofs. On the opposite end of the bay, he thought he could make out the morning trains zooming in and out of the suspended, clear-glass tunnels and the sound of the cable-car chimes ringing. He took the view in as a tiny delight, a taste of what he would be seeing and experiencing now that he was free.

 

He glanced over his shoulder. Boss hadn’t rounded the corner yet. Seungkwan grunted and spurred up a little more speed, his left foot creaking every time it hit the ground, until he reached the end of the tree-lined street and stood facing a mint blue Victorian townhouse. Seungkwan couldn’t believe his own leg, his trusty mechanical limb, led him here. How embarrassing! How would he knock on the door of some boy’s house and beg to be taken in? _I’m being chased down by an angry mob boss because I ran away, will you let me pitch camp at your place?_

 

The timer in Seungkwan’s motherboard, in the back of his neck, began ticking loudly. The sound was stressful and pressuring, certainly contributing to the thoughtless, reckless thing he did next.

 

Seungkwan began hearing Boss’s voice, his loud grunts and heavy footsteps; he couldn’t even believe himself, but before he could actively stop himself, his similarly prosthetic arm complied to his leg’s wishes and forced the rest of his body to canon-ball right through Vernon’s house’s open window.

 

He thought he passed out cold when he hit the hardwood floor on all fours, but he vaguely remembered a thought swimming around, hoping that Vernon was an oversleeper and not an early bird. He needed to get the fuck out of here before Vernon saw him, or he thought he wouldn’t be able to _live_ in this body after shouldering the embarrassment of trespassing into a boy like Vernon’s house. The timer on his neck shut off, and Seungkwan collapsed before he could question it, but little did he know that it was not a malfunction nor a mistake.

 

 

_5:00 AM_

 

 _Crash._ Vernon, with all the calmness of a sleepy madman working on a robot prototype at ungodly hours, took one earpod out of his ears, which now blasted muted music into thin air, and listened to see if he imagined the noise. He thought he could hear moaning and laboured breathing coming from the living room. His face drained of colour when he looked down at his watch. It was five. The watch had hit zero. What was waiting for him in the other room? A monster, to eat him? A hitman, to shoot him? _Goddamn,_ he should’ve bolted the fucking window shut. He wasn’t only walking into his own grave, but inviting his murderer in for a slumber party, too.

 

 _Think fast._ He grabbed the nearest, most weapon-like object as noiselessly as possible- his old violin off the shelf- and crept down the dark, shadowy hallway. The living room was completely dark, to make things worse, and _fuck,_ he should’ve installed the motion-operated light switches in the living room and not only his bedroom. His breath hitched in his throat as he rounded the corner, wielding his violin by the neck like a baseball bat.

 

He peeked around the corner, so that all that was visible of him were two comically wide eyes. Edging closer and reaffirming his grip on the violin, raising it even higher above his head, he saw a writhing lump in the moonlight coming through the open street window. Whatever it was, he had a weapon and it didn’t seem to, so it had the short end of the stick, and he had the literal longer end of it, so to speak.

 

He stuck his foot out and prodded it with a toe, as if he were testing water for its temperature, and pulled his leg back to his body as though it had burned him. Well, it felt soft and warm and clothed… he was missing his contact lenses and a cup of coffee, but he was beginning to realize that it might be a person and not some monster. Of course his imagination would run wild with the thought of a hitman or man-eating creature coming to get him, when all it was was some passed-out homeless boy.

 

He was just beginning to calm down when the boy raised his head and mumbled, “...it’s not what it looks like… I’m not in control… I didn’t mean to do this… don’t judge me...”

 

The eyes were closed, but if they had been open, he’d have seen that they were sharp and they glinted unnaturally. The corners of his lips had hinges that ran down through his skin and disappeared into his neck, but otherwise he seemed very human. He was a masterpiece visually, a truly beautiful being, and something about him made Vernon’s heart soar.

 

That realization scared him much more than Seungkwan’s unconventional appearance did, and he was ashamed of how loud and shrill the scream he let out was, and how quickly his reflexes worked; he hit him on the shoulder with the violin he was wielding, and slithered back behind the couch.

 

“Oh, but what if I killed him?” He shushed himself after speaking out loud (he was used to talking to himself in this big, empty home, but now he had to keep his thoughts in his head) sounding close to tears. Vernon didn’t want to be a murderer at fifteen, but he didn’t really blame himself for doing what he did. It was a perfectly normal reaction to finding a stranger's body in his living room floor at 5:00 AM after being spooked into thinking the secret services were out to get him because of a faulty watch. Fuck, his entire life was a joke at this point, and now, hiding behind _his_ couch in _his_ home, was probably the worst time to question it.

 

“He was beautiful, I would’ve liked to know his name- _what am I even saying?_ ” Vernon clamped a hand over his mouth.

 

In all his time living in this house he’d never encountered a burglar or a trespasser or a kid passing out on his apartment floor. San Fransokyo’s crimes were notorious, but his neighborhood was a pretty safe residential area. It had some link with the countdown on his wrist, and it frustrated him to a point near insanity that he couldn’t figure it out, that the answer wasn’t a simple formula he needed to solve.

 

The worst part of it all was that his body was subconsciously shutting down because he’d deprived it of sleep, and he was physically unable to stop it. His eyes drooped slowly and the violin clanged against the ground, which woke him up again, but he soon fell asleep cramped under his couch after a few minutes of observing his half-dead “guest” from behind it. And the sun still rose, casting beams of warmth on both of their serene, sleeping bodies.

 

 

Vernon woke to the smell and sound of bacon sizzling. He was almost fooled into thinking it was one of those week-day mornings where his mother was in the kitchen making breakfast and packing his lunchbox, until he realized the back of his skull hurt from sleeping on the floor. He almost wondered out loud again, why he was on the floor and why the violin he hadn’t played since he was twelve was lying next to him, but it all came rushing into his head before he could get the words out. It felt like a film montage had replayed to remind him of what had gone down last night.

 

So who was cooking the bacon? Everything he’d ever attempted to cook turned into molten crap, but this smell made his mouth water despite his better judgment- because, if as he suspected, it was his “guest” cooking it, he refused to take even one bite. Because he knew it was probably spiked with poison or something. He got up with some difficulty and eventually made his way into the kitchen, trying not to jump when he saw a brown-haired, apron-wearing boy standing over the stove.

 

“Who the hell are you, and more importantly, what are you doing in my house?” Vernon asked, a hand on his hip. He was still scared, but much less so in broad daylight, after a good night’s sleep, and when he realized that the boy in question was exactly that; a boy, shorter and plumper than Vernon even. Nothing to call his mom or the police over.

 

The boy turned around, looking a weird mixture of offended and apologetic. “Rudeness is _not_ appreciated in this household-”

 

“It’s _my_ house! My rules!”

 

He laughed. “I’m just making you an apology breakfast, no need to get sassy is all I’m sayin’. I’m Seungkwan.”

 

“Uh-huh.” Vernon looked him up and down suspiciously. “I’m Vernon. You still didn’t tell me why you crashed into my apartment last night, though.”

 

Seungkwan flipped the bacon strips one by one with his spatula, revealing crispy browned undersides. He shuffled around Vernon and fetched a bowl of cracked eggs from the countertop. The utter disregard of the fact that it was Vernon’s home, and further that he was a complete and total outsider acting like he had always been living in the place, was angering Vernon irrationally. Maybe he was a little bit hungry and whatever Seungkwan was making looked really good, but he refused to crumble under the pressure and eat it.

 

The fact that this outsider had dewy skin and high, regal cheekbones and moved in a seamless way that Vernon had never seemed to master, only angered him further. It wasn’t fair that pretty people could cook well, and get all up in Vernon’s face and expect him to accept it. What was worse, was that he was upset with himself for accepting it even now, after thinking these thoughts.

 

“It’s a dramatic story you might not want to hear,” Seungkwan finally said, seeming pleased at this persona he was molding himself into. Like a child trying out a million theater masks, borrowing and taking and imitating what he’d seen around him. “But I was being chased by the Yakuza all night.”

 

“Bullshit.” Vernon pulled a chair out and sat right where he could watch Seungkwan’s back, to monitor his every move. Just in case he was a hitman sent to kill him- he couldn’t shake off that suspicion _too_ easily.

 

“I kid you not, look out the window if you don’t believe me.” Seungkwan huffed and tutted while Vernon darted over to the small kitchen window, pulling the curtains apart so they draped around his face as he looked out. First off, the sun was blinding, but secondly, there were three tall, beer-bellied men in black sunglasses pacing his small street, talking into their wrists.

 

“Dude, what could _you_ have possibly done to get _the_ Yakuza to chase after you?” Vernon’s initial thought was _I don’t want a convict camped out in my house!,_ but he felt that was maybe too rude.

 

Once again, Seungkwan seemed offended by this judgment of his character based off his appearance. “That’s besides the point. I’m basically hiding out at your place right now, and I really am sorry for frightening you, but I can’t leave until they do.” He slid the bacon strips and sunny side up eggs onto Vernon’s plate, next to which sat a tall glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. “Now, eat up.”

 

Vernon was dangerously close to crumbling under the pressure, with the smell and steam wafting up from right under his nose. “Thanks, I guess, but aren’t you going to eat?”

 

Seungkwan ripped a loose string off his ratty shirt and tangled it in his fingers. His hand caught the sunlight and glinted coppery gold. “It’s bad enough to invade a stranger’s house, but eating their food is where I draw the line.”

 

He almost snorted. Seungkwan was polite, but only in the weirdest ways. “You’re already here, you might as well. It’s not cool since you cooked it.” Vernon slid exactly half of his serving onto another plate he’d fetched from the cupboard, and because he was Vernon, tried to pour half his cup of juice into another mug only to end up spilling most of it on the table. This was his way of making sure the food wasn’t poisoned or spiked, because if Seungkwan the chef ate it, it was safe. Seungkwan dug in.

 

“Cool hand, by the way,” Vernon complimented tentatively.

 

Seungkwan’s hand slithered up his sleeve. “It’s not cool to make fun of people with prosthetic limbs.”

 

“I’m not. I’m just saying, it looks like some real tight craftsmanship went into building that one. Does it operate like your regular arm does?”

 

“More or less.”

 

They fell into silence as Seungkwan watched Vernon eat. He only took small bites here and there, despite the ravenous look in his eyes and the prominent dip from his high cheekbones to the severely sunken apples of his cheeks. Vernon stopped mid-bite. “What’s the problem? I eat like a pig, get used to it.” He was blunt and rude often these days, because even if he was in a good mood, he wasn’t used to interacting with things that weren’t his desktop screen or some kind of small robotic device.

 

“You don’t recognize me at all, do you?” Seungkwan asked, amazed by how oblivious the other boy was.

 

“Huh…?”

 

“I’m one of the entertainers at that club with the bot-fights every Friday.”

 

Vernon didn’t even blink before he deadpanned. “Yeah, I remember you. Does that mean you’ve been stalking me?”

 

“N-no, no! It’s not like that at _all_!” His voice glitched when he was upset or flustered. Vernon couldn’t help but smile- it was a personification of all the adorable things his little robots did, but on a real person. Somehow, for once, he found something a human was (albeit unintentionally) doing endearing, and he felt weirdly ashamed of the swell in his chest.

 

After a moment, he pushed his bowl away from him and let out a small burp. “That was amazing. You need to teach me how to make that before you go.”

 

“I’m disgusted by the fact that you don’t know how to make bacon and eggs. Like, were you raised in a barn? The way your house looked this morning _certainly_ reinforced that idea.” Seungkwan dabbed at Vernon's cheeks with a napkin, wiping off bits of food and oil that somehow flew out of Vernon’s mouth due to his feral-child way of eating.

 

He didn’t know if he wanted to push Seungkwan’s hand away or just let it happen, because it felt kinda maybe just a _little_ bit nice _,_ so he ended up standing idly until Seungkwan finished. “Why am I not surprised you gave yourself a house tour while I was asleep?” He said out of the corner of his mouth.

 

Seungkwan took both their plates to the sink, rinsing them and washing his hands. He threw suds at Vernon, which was pretty rich of him to do. “Hey, I was trying to clean the place up to, repay you somehow.”

 

As soon as Seungkwan left the counter, the two robot-arms Vernon had installed into it rose, flexed their white plastic arms, and got to work washing the dishes and cleaning the sink. He loved all the lazy-way-out tweaks he’d installed to improve his household, because the days of doing dishes and putting away groceries (among other mundane tasks) were long gone with these inventions. It made him proud to see the small “H.V.C” monograms etched into the elbows of the design, a signature one could find on all his devices and creations.

 

“Repay me for hitting you upside the head with a violin?”

 

“You didn’t throw me out, so it kind of could’ve been worse. Oh, and I did your laundry too and _boy,_ those stains-”

 

Vernon waved his arms and smoothed his hair so it pressed down flat against his skull. “Sssh, enough, _please_! You sound like my mother.”

 

 

Seungkwan watched Vernon study and build. He cleared enough of Vernon’s junk away to make himself a cozy sitting spot at on the edge of Vernon’s basement’s lab table so he could watch him tinker and hammer at things, mumble about proportions and specifications Seungkwan didn’t understand, use his “laser chopper thing”, as he dubbed it, to slice through metals and weld them into shape. Vernon looked cute in safety goggles, and he hadn’t hesitated to mention that when Vernon first put them on.

 

Seungkwan made a habit of going through Vernon’s stuff without permission, and Vernon, so private and easily embarrassed, found himself not minding it as much as he thought he would. He’d either gone through a whole lot of instant growing-up since a stranger crashed into his house, or it was something about Seungkwan that bewitched Vernon into feeling alright with everything. He felt calmer, sounder, and much more loving around Seungkwan, and sometimes he even fought desires to invite Seungkwan to cuddle and sleep in his bed.

 

“What’s this?” He’d ask when he found some one of the restored vintage pieces Vernon kept on display, in prime condition, around his house on bookshelves and cabinets. Today, it was a blue cassette marked in Sharpie, something he was taught about in history class, a practically _primitive_ method of listening to music (someone tech-savvy like him was bound to exaggerate). He told Seungkwan as much.

 

Seungkwan looked fascinated, and he held the thing in his hands even more delicately than before. “Does it work? Where did you find it?” He was as curious and ready to learn as Vernon was, the exception being that he gave his questions and curiosities voices whereas Vernon found a book or online program to answer it for him without needing to speak.

 

“It didn’t work when I tried listening to it. I bought it off some guy downtown who said he found it in the glovebox of some 1990s car. I don’t know why, but I felt weirdly attracted to it so that’s why I got it.” He shrugged and turned his back to Seungkwan, returning to whatever he was drilling into.

 

 

He made every meal of theirs, but he was slowly running out of recipes, and he tapped Vernon on the shoulder one morning to inform him of that. Vernon honestly wouldn’t have given a damn if they had beef noodles all day every day or whatever, because food was food and he only needed it to fuel his body while he hacked away at his projects, but Seungkwan made it clear he wanted new recipes. So Vernon downloaded three terabytes’ worth of recipe audiobooks off the internet and installed them into the robot in the kitchen so it could read the recipes out loud to Seungkwan as he cooked. Nothing special.

 

 

As his cheeks grew fuller and redder, so did his attitude. “I hate being trapped inside. No offence, your house is super fancy and high-tech and all, but I didn’t run away to get locked in a house,” he’d say as he spooned flour into melted butter and whisked it into the roux that would top their pasta dinner. Vernon hovered behind him, trying to help but trying not to somehow turn even Seungkwan’s cooking into, well, molten crap.

 

“I ran away from my parents’ house so I _could_ be trapped inside all day if I wanted to, so no, I don’t really relate.”

 

“I don’t understand you or your flawed logic.”

 

“Eh. People are either loud, evil, or worse, “ _loving_ ”, and the world is full of people out there,” he shrugged. “Freaking robots have more modes of operation.”

 

“Loud or evil I understand. Oh, you don’t know _how_ much I understand,” he paused and thought, as if trying to remember what the point he wanted to question was, “but how is being a loving person bad?”

 

“Love is a bunch of chemicals going off in your brain telling you to reproduce, it’s not even real and _I_ don’t want nothing to do with it,” he summarized, with all the disgust of a five-year-old refusing his steamed peas and spinach.

 

Vernon’s dinner plate was served cold and particularly bland that night.

 

 

While oblivious to the point of appearing callous and heartless in most situations, what he _had_ gathered from that conversation was that Seungkwan yearned to be doing something besides Vernon’s laundry. So he decided to give Seungkwan a tour of and access to his indoor garden the very next day.

 

The entire room was covered in a fine, thick layer of fuzzy grey dust from a few years of disuse, and the sun slanted sideways through the soundproof glass walls. It had seemed like a much better option than a silly veranda when he was leasing the place, but still, he never got around to actually planting anything or keeping the place nice for visitors. There were sachets of flower-seeds and shriveled brown herbs in the self-watering flowerpots (which only self-watered for so long before needing a maintenance checkup that Vernon neglected to give them), and there was Seungkwan twirling in the center of the room. “Can I plant things? I don’t think I’ve ever taken care of plants before.”

 

Vernon shrugged, a little embarrassed. “It’s pretty gross… I kinda should’ve swept the place or something.” He ran a finger across one of the metal shelves and raised it to find a swathe of lint-like dust on the tip of his finger, like grey cotton candy on a stick.

 

“No, I just need a bit of dirt and maybe a spade, and I can work my magic on it," he flexed his hands and rubbed them together.

 

“Hey, you know. Your arm?” Vernon spoke like that, choppy sentences he spat out without really thinking of or shaping up in his head, the products of too many thoughts and ideas for one small, human brain to handle. The way he spoke gave the impression that his words were the rain of a brainstorm, quite literally. “If you let me fix it for you, I could pretty easily install a spade-arm function so you don’t even have to use a tool. Not to brag or anything, but you’d only have to spend like one day without your hand.”

 

Seungkwan clutched his metal hand with his flesh-joints-and-bones one and shook his head. “I don't trust anyone with my _limbs,_ Vernon, and I hope you understand that.”

 

Vernon understood, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t bummed out about it. Luckily for him, he couldn’t stay upset for long without something else grabbing his attention, which was Seungkwan inspecting the junk pile in the corner.

 

“What’s this?” Seungkwan pointed at a glass grandfather clock leaning sideways against the wall. It was ticking, hands moving, but all backwards. _0:21, 0:20, 0:19, 0:18..._

 

“Agh, _that_ piece of garbage. The bane of my existence.” Vernon groaned and rubbed the back of his neck, as if the nights’ worth of cramped neck and back muscles from bending down to work on it were paining him once again. It was his wimpy equivalent to old battle wounds still being sore many years after.

 

“I think it’s quite pretty.”

 

“Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work.” He went back to where he was rummaging for gardening tools in the small, dusty shed. “And trust me, getting a clock to run is a beginner’s skill,” he threw over his shoulder.

 

Seungkwan was set in his own ways and a little pissed about how equally stubborn Vernon was, so he decided maybe he had the patience and “beginner level” experience to get it to work. If Vernon could do it, Seungkwan could probably do it blindfolded. _Hmph_ . It read _0:01_ when he touched it, and halted at zero. Then it did something weird; all the hands spun forward with a small _zzzt_ sound and realigned themselves to read the real time. He stared at it, mouth agape, but it was doing nothing besides what a normal clock would do; ticking away serenely, in the right direction.

 

“Vern, Vern, _look!_ I fixed it, check it out!”

 

“That’s impossible-” he turned around, and cut his own sentence off with a gasp, raising both bushy brows. “Dude. What did you do?”

 

“All I did was touch it! Like this,” he demonstrated, “and it rewound and started ticking normally. Crazy, huh?” Seungkwan was beaming, clearly proud of himself. He didn’t realize the layers that went into this situation, that made Vernon so shocked.

 

He’d salvaged this clock from a junkyard, because the glass was reflecting the sun and it’d caught his eye and he was a sucker for vintage things, but it refused to work. It had been as stubborn about not functioning properly as Vernon was about getting it to work, and the two of them spent a few months wrestling on Vernon’s work desk before he tucked it away in the room he used least in the house- this one. He was so frustrated with it he didn’t even want to see it and its stupid counter-clockwise existence.

 

And now Seungkwan sidled in and tapped it and got it to work, but that wasn’t even what _ticked him off_ (ha!). It was that it reminded him of his malfunctioning wristwatch and how it had counted down to zero right as Seungkwan crashed through his window weeks ago.

 

“What does this mean?”

 

“It means you can step off, Vern, because I’m the new tech expert in town.”

 

 

 

Vernon’s house was still being watched. Seungkwan refused to so much as look out the window to check if the men in black had left Vernon’s doorstep because he was convinced they had photographs of his face downloaded into their minds, and they would recognize him in an instant. But every time Vernon skateboarded down the street to go fetch some ramen cups or whatever from the corner-store, their eyes silently followed him to and from his front door.

 

“So you’re using me for my house but you won’t tell me where the hell you came from? And why they’ve got ‘wanted’ holograms with your face and a five-digit bounty to your name all over the city?” Vernon asked calmly as he tucked his bike into its solar-recharge port. Knowing he was letting a fugitive sleep on a futon in his basement was both thrilling and unsettling, even more so knowing that said fugitive was nothing but a kid who probably got framed for something stupid because he was a cyborg.

 

Seungkwan grimaced and his voice did the glitchy-mechanical-hiccup thing again. “ _Reaaaally?_ Oh my god, I didn’t think he’d go that far to find me.”

 

“Yeah, and dude, I don’t mind you being stuck here for the time being because I, uh-” he cringed and his pulse got stronger, “ _tolerate_ your presence, but I kinda need to know.”

 

“Just ask one of your smartie-pants devices,” he muttered sarcastically, “I’m probably all over the city newsfeeds. _Not_ what I wanted to go down in ‘Frokyo history for, being the missing runaway robot boy.”

 

Vernon had tried, and he told him that flat-out, no shame. He had done a few web searches on Boo Seungkwan and his whereabouts, but nothing turned up even after scrolling through 99 pages’ worth of search results. Seungkwan was repulsed that Vernon had actually done that, even though _he_ was the one to suggest it a few seconds ago.

 

They sat on opposite sides of Vernon’s work desk and stared each other down until Vernon’s eyes watered and he blinked the tears back into their ducts. Seungkwan won this round, folding his arms and raising an eyebrow triumphantly. His metal arm wrist creaked, and he couldn’t help the soft gasp that fell out before he could swallow it.

 

Vernon dropped the angry act like a hot potato. “Does it hurt?”

 

Seungkwan tilted his head to one side. “You care?”

 

“Well, this is kind of my area of expertise. Can I see it?” Vernon had been itching to give Seungkwan’s mechanical parts a look since his arrival here. It didn’t help that it was practically ingrained in him to fix anything that was broken, and similarly to build machinery and robots to cream-of-the-crops functionality and durability, so seeing Seungkwan struggle with his creaky, breaking limbs and stubbornly refuse to be touched was hard for him to accept.

 

Seungkwan succumbed to Vernon’s eyes, the way they went from a steel-cutting glare to begging-puppy in the span of a few seconds. He started rolling up the sleeve of his shirt (Vernon had given him his best pajamas to borrow) but stopped midway. “Only if you let me have your watch.” He nodded towards the one on Vernon’s wrist, the peculiar one that had been counting down slowly for years and hit zero on that night. Vernon had explained the deal with that one before, and Seungkwan had been uncannily fascinated by it since.

 

“This thing? Oh, man, you can have it if you want.” Vernon slid it over, and hesitated before speaking again, rethinking what he was going to say for once. “First off, not to be nosy or, like, bring up touchy subjects, but are all of your innards ‘n’ guts human besides this arm and your leg?”

 

Seungkwan gave him a look, accompanied by a tired sigh. “Nope.” He rolled his turtleneck down to reveal a rectangle in the nape of his neck, a motherboard with a thin sheet of white metal pinned down by two small screws, one in each end. “This is why my voice glitches sometimes. I think they need maintenance.”

 

“I don’t know if this’ll hurt, I’ve not operated on, uh-”

 

“Save it and start working,” Seungkwan snapped, bending his neck down even further to give Vernon more probing space.

 

This was practically vital-organ surgery he was performing. When he finally removed the thin metal cover, he was greeted with the mini-mushroom cloud and yellow sparks of a short-circuiting machine. There was a tiny digital clock embedded into the very top of his motherboard, but the screen where he should’ve been able to read the time was blank.

 

“Seungkwan, how come you didn’t tell me you had a clock in your motherboard?”

 

“Because I’ve never even opened my own motherboard for maintenance, stupid!”

 

“Has it ever done anything weird? Like tick backwards or something?”

 

“It starts ticking and beeping randomly, I guess. Never knew it was a clock, but I knew something in my motherboard went off sometimes, and that it’s almost killed me on accident.”

 

Once he was done reconnecting wires and sealing it up, Seungkwan held his arm out and Vernon clutched it delicately between his thumb and index- the skin so papery he could see the wiry green arteries underneath, and the forearm so thin he could wrap those two fingers around it and make the tips meet. The craftsmanship on his arm was wonderful, and oddly familiar; the sheets of metal were triple-ply and hammered thick, and the internal wires, which stuck out of place and sent yellow sparks occasionally, were wrapped in a layer of waterproof electric tape, both things being Vernon signatures. Strange.

 

“Pretty fucked up, huh?”

 

Vernon scowled, defensive. “If they’d been _properly_ maintained they’d be working just fine.”

 

“As if I had a choice,” Seungkwan yawned. “What part of ‘being chased by the Yakuza’ implies that I had the time to maintain my mechanical limbs?”

 

“Before you got chased by the Yakuza. Did they function well?” Vernon used this as an attempt to get Seungkwan to spill something about his past, which he was very secretive and mysterious about. And Vernon couldn’t help being nosy and childish, because a big part of it was wanting to learn as much as he could about Seungkwan.

 

No answer, just a purse of the soft pink lips. Vernon hid his reddening ears by shaking his shaggy hair over them and turned back to Seungkwan’s arm.

 

The design was amazing, and the question of who created it was on the tip of his tongue right as he thumbed dust off a scratch in the armour, which turned out not to be a scratch at all. It was a small corner-plaque that spelled something out in familiar gold scrawl... _H.V.C manufacturing_.

 

He shouldn’t have dropped Seungkwan’s forearm so it clanked and dented on the tile, but that didn’t matter. Seungkwan jumped and yelped. “What are you doing?! That’s my arm, _dumbass_ , I felt that pain!”

 

“How…” Shock melted into confusion, and after a minute of that all his emotions melted together like too many scoops of multi-flavoured ice cream left to become rainbow soup in the hollow inside of a cone, the cone being his skull. He shook his head. “Your arm. I made your arm.”

 

“Look, I know it’s a top-quality mechanical prosthetic, but you can’t just _claim_ things as your own-”

 

“No. Seungkwan, listen!” He helped Seungkwan off his perch since he didn’t have both arms hooked in to do it himself, and tried not to think too much about how soft but firm his skin and muscles had felt under his grip. They walked into the kitchen, and he manually activated the two hands that worked at his countertop, showing Seungkwan the monogram and comparing it to the one on his arm. “You… I made your arm, like maybe this is a big conspiracy theory and I made your arm in a past life or something but-”

 

Seungkwan shushed him. “Ugh. You’re so weird, Vernon. There’s definitely a more plausible reason.”

 

“So? It’s obviously a new world order government experiment and we both somehow escaped the system, because this is creepy and unnatural and, and  there have been too many weird things happening with clocks around both of us. And strange situations happening leading up to you showing up in my life!” Vernon huffed. “It’s not _normal_ is all I’m saying.”

 

Seungkwan was thinking hard and Vernon was watching the pieces come together behind his shiny black eyes. He could practically see the figurative lightbulb hovering over his head and lighting up at such a speed that it exploded into a million flaming filament pieces. Seungkwan wagged his finger at Vernon and jumped up and down in unconstrained excitement. “I know how! I know why!”

 

“How and why, then?” Vernon folded his arms and tapped his foot. Seungkwan’s excitement was easily infectious and so endearing that his lips tugged and struggled to stay pressed into a straight line, but he wouldn’t let himself hop around and scream _yet_.

 

“I - my leg and arm - attracted to your house! When I was running, they led me here!” Seungkwan yelled between hitches of breath. “Vern, _Vern_ , that’s how I showed up! The metals in it were attracted to the other parts or materials you keep here in your house! Or maybe attracted to _you_ since you built them?! Even back at the bar, every time you showed up my leg would almost unbuckle and fly off in your direction!”

 

Vernon suppressed his voice like his smile, forcing it to come out of the corner of his mouth, clear and slow. “I know. But how did _you_ get the robot limbs I’d built in the first place? _That’s_ what weirds me out. It’s too much coincidence.”

 

Seungkwan gripped Vernon’s hand. Vernon tried not to attempt to melt into the kitchen counter he was leaning against. “Okay, I found these parts in a dumpster somewhere, in a trash-bag full of robotics junk right at the top of the heap. They caught my attention when I was running down the street… I don’t dig through trash, like, _yuck_! But anyway, yeah, I took them at the time.”

 

 _Huh._ Vernon thought he could remember throwing out a bag of faulty prototypes he’d built at some point, but only because he was so angry at them that he wanted nothing to do with them, not even collapsing them and recycling parts. They didn’t fit onto any of his robots- in fact, they only operated at the touch of human flesh, and only Vernon’s flesh at that. But they seemed to work flawlessly on Seungkwan, from what Vernon had observed. It was all getting too weird at this point. Everything that didn’t work with him worked on Seungkwan, and everything in his life seemed to be leading up to Seungkwan diving through his window.

 

“It must’ve been something you threw.” Seungkwan watched his face, squeezing his hand. He was getting way too comfortable with this touchy-feely business, and Vernon was getting way too lenient with letting it happen. Not like it felt good or anything.

 

“I’m pretty sure I saw you starting to bolt down my street as I was throwing it, now that I think back.” Vernon held Seungkwan’s sleeve between his fingers. “You had diesel- black blood- on your sleeves, and kinda lighter hair?”

 

He could physically feel Seungkwan shrinking in on himself, even though his body did nothing but tense up a bit. It happened every time.

 

All it took were five more words. Words from the bottom of Vernon’s heart. “Dude, you can tell me.”

 

 

Seungkwan made instant miso soup and filled two large ceramic bowls, threw open the roof windows of his indoor garden so they could have just the right cold breeze and ambience for a drawn-out backstory recital, and spread a blanket over the ground so they wouldn’t be lying on dirt and dead leaves.

 

He sat up proudly, chin held high, using his gardening spade as a makeshift microphone. Vernon was expecting a funny tale, but nothing much because the whole lead-up felt almost comical, like he was about to read out of a book and not answer Vernon’s question about where he came from and how he ended up here. “Are you ready to learn what it’s like to spend a lifetime in my shoes?”

 

“You mean, a lifetime in your _boo_ ts?” Vernon snickered into his soup bowl, and his arm was kicked so that he spat up soup and it dribbled down his chin.

 

“I’m serious. I’m making this into a funny thing because it hurts less that way, it feels like it’s someone else’s story I’m telling and not mine. So _listen_.”

 

“Oo-kay.” Since he was missing limbs, it must be kind of bad. Definitely worse than anything Vernon, whose fifteen years on earth were pretty cushy, would’ve experienced. The running-from-a-mob-boss part told him that much. He straightened up and gestured for Seungkwan to begin, feeling guilty for treating it so lightly.

 

 

He never knew parents (and he still wasn’t sure who his mother was, he said), but he knew the bends and curves of the streets and slums of ‘Frokyo like they were his own. At six years old he could get himself from the northern outskirts of the city right to the docks downtown in less time than it took a bullet train, he said, all because of his vast knowledge of the city. He didn’t remember having gone to school.

 

Back then, he had four soft, supple, fleshy limbs and a voice that wasn’t defect and glitchy. Vernon interjected here, to tell him he heard him singing a pretty song the other day, but Seungkwan told him his voice was a sliver of its former glory now.

 

“It’s defunct, but I’m… okay with it now. More okay than I was when I found out I couldn’t sing anymore.” His eyes went glassy and Vernon allowed him the time to recollect himself. “Back to what I was saying. I’ve always had a mechanical heart, a motherboard and screws in the back of my neck…”

 

Seungkwan sang his heart and voice out. He compared the feeling to being like a bird whose wings were cut off, now tied down and no longer able to do what was once easy and only natural to him. He used to spend his days in subway stations and bus stops singing to any tune, any stolen instrumentals and burned audio files, for food money. In front of the few people that gave as much as a glance in his direction, he had a performer’s mask, hiding hunger, sickness, and self-pity under feigned arrogance and energy meant to charm the crowd. People loved sassy children. He slept in the shade of freeway underpasses, nothing to soothe his hoarse throat or the aching balls of his feet after standing all day.

 

 

Vernon, whose voice was often a warbly whisper when he finally talked from lack of use as opposed to forced excessive use, swallowed back the lump growing in his throat. At this moment, an _emotion_ sent a tremor through his body, guilt for being unable to replace Seungkwan’s larynx with his. For thinking his life was boring when he had always been able to choose his future, choose that he wanted to move out of his parents’ house at fourteen when they began fighting too loudly and still have them there to support him financially. But he supposed blaming himself for things out of his control was stupid.

 

 

“Sing! I’m not paying until I hear you finish that song! _Get up, urchin_!”

 

Sometimes, the people gave him no money at all, preferring to mill around bossing him and watching the show. It probably gave them some pathetic sense of entitlement to watch a homeless boy struggle to pander to everyone’s demands. At the end of the day, when he sat down on the curb to count the coins in the bottom of his baseball cap, he rarely had enough to buy cream cheese to spread on his bread.

 

That’s where Boss came in. He was just someone in the crowd, tall, eyes always shaded with sunglasses, beer-bellied, and not a problem to Seungkwan until he noticed him showing up every day. He payed plenty and asked Seungkwan to sing whatever Seungkwan wanted to. He never was there to wait for the subway, just to watch Seungkwan and walk away whispering into his earpiece.

 

It was late in the afternoon, the metal architecture of the station glistening orange and yellow in the rays coming in through the glass roof. Seungkwan was packing up to leave when the man bent down to talk to him, adopting the rather condescending tone most adults used when addressing children. “Hey, kiddo. Whaddya think about a job where you get to sing every day, for ten times more money than you make now,” he held up both hands, just in case Seungkwan didn’t know how to count, “how’s that sound?”

 

“The sun’s setting. Do you really need _sun_ glasses now?” Seungkwan's point was sharp and clear.

 

Boss all but cackled. “Just the right face and personality, sassy like my customers like ‘em.” He ran his thumb down Seungkwan’s pudgy cheeks, and Seungkwan stepped away, disgusted. His hands were dry and scaly, fingernails long and yellow. Each finger stacked with gemstone-topped rings. Those were exceptionally rare and expensive in the 2100s, since the earth had long been mined dry of gems, gold, and silver. These couldn’t be anything but salvaged vintages and they were only sold at auctions. “You get a nice big bed, three meaty meals a day. All you have to do is come with me.”

 

Seungkwan couldn’t help licking his lips. He’d only smelled meat in his lifetime, never gotten to taste it besides a scrap or two he found in a restaurant garbage bin. “...what’s the job?”

 

Boss waved a hand dismissively. “You and a few other singers I’ve scouted perform and entertain some people at this lounge I own.”

 

People were spilling down the stairs and out of the subway platform they stood on. In the blink of an eye, Seungkwan and Boss were the only people there, voices and movements ricocheting off the walls. “I… dunno. Maybe.”

Boss pulled a translucent, touch-sensitive device out of his back pocket, unfolding Seungkwan’s grubby fist and pressing his thumb against the screen so that a perfect copy of all the swirly lines on his skin was clearly imprinted. “You- let me go!”

 

Boss had grabbed his arm, the other hand pressed against his mouth, muffling his protests, and dragged him up the stairs and into the limousine idling by the subway entrance. Seungkwan kicked at his shins and groin, but his mauve pinstriped suit must’ve been bulletproof.

 

 

There were many other young children like him in Boss’s “lounge”; which turned out to be more of a bar with entertainers and weekend bot-fights for the old men of the slums. Unwanted robot children were found as rogues on the streets and promised food and shelter, and then forced to perform laboriously and clean the place up when it finally closed for the night.

 

It was a trafficking business, not as abusive as it _could’ve_ been, but every child had been scouted and forced into lifelong contracts through Boss taking their thumbprint without their consent or realization. He proceeded to kidnap them and employ them at one of his many entertainment joints around the city.

 

All half-dozen of them slept in two beds and wore ratty clothes. They were fed, but only whatever was leftover on the dishes they were about to wash, because “robots didn’t need too much sustenance”. Seungkwan had never gotten more than a whiff of the meat he was promised.

 

 

“Wait, wait, time-out,” Vernon interrupted, “was the first time you had meat… that bacon for breakfast in my kitchen?”

 

Seungkwan nodded bashfully.

 

“And how’d it taste?” Vernon was absolutely fascinated.

 

“I think my heart almost short-circuited.” Seungkwan sighed. “Ah, I can almost hear the sizzle now. So, as I was saying, I grew up there…”

 

 

Seungkwan didn’t exactly have friends. He had the other kids, many of which could hardly form sentences when not singing the songs on the setlists, due to being feral and uncivilized as children, robotic by nature and thus demanding what they wanted through morse code or loud whirring noises pre-programmed into their motherboards. They didn’t talk to him- they were probably jealous of him for standing out as the best performer by virtue of being able to talk and interact with the customers.

 

On stage, they would go to the extent of giving each other kisses if the customers grunted out such a command, because Boss would know if they disobeyed. None of it was genuine, but it solicited the right reaction, and something about working in such miserable conditions together caused a bond to slowly form between them. They were actors and marionettes on physically nonexistent strings more than anything else, birds whose wings were chopped to stubs before they could even molt their downy fluff and grow feathers to fly.

 

Seungkwan was eight, leaving Boss’s backroom after a pretty rough scolding for something insignificant but certainly not worth scolding a child over, when one of them came over and patted his shoulder in a rhythmic, monotone sort of way. _Pat, pat, pat._

 

It was Seungkwan’s ninth birthday, and he had just explained the concept of birthdays in a mix of broken hand gestures and morse code to the other children when he went up to bed twenty minutes later to find a plate piled with a haphazard hill of food scraps, nine lit matches stuck awkwardly in the top of the mush.

 

Seungkwan was thirteen when he was washing the dishes, humming softly under his breath, and his attention was so wholly encapsulated by the gentle, falling snow out the scullery window that he dropped the bowl he had been drying. It shattered sickeningly, shards of green glass flying in every direction. One of the girls held her fingers to her lips and picked up the broom, tiptoeing over and around the pieces so her bare feet wouldn’t be punctured, before bending down and doing his work for him.

 

“What was that?” Boss would call from his office, voice muffled around the cigar he most certainly held between his lips. Probably reading a newspaper, muddy boots up on the desk.

 

“It didn’t break!” Seungkwan would respond. He and the girl winked at each other.

 

Moments like these were what kept Seungkwan sane, reminded him that where he was wasn’t forever. Gave him ambitious ideas of not only running away, but specifically, taking a piece of this place with him to sustain him and his journey. Priceless diamond rings, even more specifically.

 

 

Seungkwan added so much colour and spice to his words, punctuated them just intensely enough to evoke the desired emotion, described the situation so that Vernon could picture it perfectly in his head. He choked up and his voice glitched and small tears were trapped in his eyelashes sometimes, but Vernon was ensnared by the story nonetheless. He had to try hard not to cry when watching Seungkwan struggle not to.

 

Or maybe his words were nothing special, and the story would seem like any other sob-story a rogue child conjured up for the press, if it weren’t for whatever connection was between them. As his words shaped the story, they hung in the air, invisibly, and wove some kind of newfound bond that wasn’t there before. Seungkwan sharing such intimacy and rawness from within, and Vernon was not covering his emotions with music or a machine he tinkered with, not hiding away or pretending he wasn’t paying attention, not letting his constant whirling thoughts and ideas take him to another place instead.

 

No, he was there, eyes wide and lips pressed shut and arms wrapped around the legs pressed up to his chest, hanging onto every word.

 

 

“They say, in movies, when the main character doesn’t actually narrate what the plan is before doing it, it’s usually a successful operation. Or that’s what I read on an article somewhere,” Seungkwan says.

 

“So are you not going to tell me? Because it was a success and you got away from him?” The end of Vernon’s sentence tilted up hopefully.

 

“Kid, I got my arm and leg _chopped off_ ,” he pointed to the stubs left of his arm and leg unnecessarily, "the thing is, I still need to tell you how it happened.”

 

 

Seungkwan had packed light, which meant a matchbox and five dollars in his pocket, because the only worldly possessions he owned besides those were the clothes on his back.

 

That night he had two goals, one realistic and the other purely delusional, a fox-trap waiting for his featherlight feet to find their way onto it; he was going to run away and become a free boy, and he was going to steal the diamond ring that had been on Boss’s right index since he first met him. And Boss never took that ring off, so he would have to slide it off his hand as he slept. Seungkwan was insane, but the thought of that smallest possibility that he could get away with it, and build an empire off that ring’s price when he ran away, the thought of theft and escape happening right under Boss’s upturned nose, was too much for him to pass up.

 

The part where he went through Boss’s private living quarters was going to happen either way, Seungkwan said, because Boss’s windows and balcony doors were the only ones that didn’t have motion-sensors and invisible laser-beams designed to alert security of escape attempts.

 

He crept up the creaky wooden staircase, bouncing around on each step on the balls of his feet in hopes that it would make less noise the lighter he stepped each time. He reached the top-floor landing, and he couldn’t help but stop and admire the loft.

 

The difference between the two floors was a rags-to-riches story laid out, a segregation in itself. Seungkwan was made to feel like he didn’t fit in, in his ripped clothes and rarely-washed hair, by the suspended paintings of Japanese imperial family members, the blood-red curtains and the frescoed wallpaper. But he still gaped, and his hungry eyes took every paint-stroke and fold in the wallpaper in, before he began making his way down the hall as silently as possible.

 

Boss had a double-king bed all to himself, goose-down pillows piled high under his neck. His sheets and blankets were of some rippled, shiny material Seungkwan had never seen before, because they caught the neon lights filtering through his street window and reflected them back. There was a pair of fluffy slippers set on the floor next to his bed, and Seungkwan couldn’t help trying them on just to experience it. It felt like he was walking on warm snow.

 

Now, he opened the window. The cold, nose-reddening wind carried the smells of car exhaust and sizzling street food. He would jump out of here when he was done getting the ring, and jump from cobbled roof to roof without looking back, or at least until he was far enough away to.

 

Boss snored, and his breath was rancid. He had a bottle of sake on his nightstand, the cap and half its contents missing. No one was watching Seungkwan, so he had the freedom to make any face he wanted to, which meant his face was wrinkled and his nose plugged.

 

Seungkwan found the ring as planned. He held Boss’s hand up, gently, tentatively, so he could feel the callouses on his palms and the protruding, pulsating veins on the dorsal side. The sleeping man’s eyelids fluttered, and he groaned, but he was still knocked out.

 

Now he tugged, and the ring gave a satisfying little champagne-cork pop as it slid off his finger into Seungkwan’s fist. He resisted the urge to dance or sing victoriously. He needed to be quiet, and he could dance on some rooftop later.

 

But his body had other thoughts. Before he could hoist himself up through the window-frame, the back of his neck began ticking and beeping, probably intending to be a faulty alarm clock but sounding more like an emergency siren in that moment.

 

 

Seungkwan’s eye corners were wet and irritated from being wiped constantly to prevent himself from crying. His lower lip trembled.

 

“...it’s okay. You don’t have to continue.” Vernon attempted to sound soothing, but it was mostly awkward. He didn’t know that Seungkwan appreciated the words either way. "I can imagine what happened from that moment onwards."

 

“No, this is kind of the climax and the ending. Just a sec.” Seungkwan wiped at his eyes with the backs of his hands and blew his nose. Vernon… did something weird in that moment.

 

“Hey, bro, come here,” Vernon said, patting the ground next to him.

 

Seungkwan crawled over, his leg creaking. Vernon was being controlled by an invisible force for the time being, something making him wrap his arms around Seungkwan and tuck him into his chest for a _hug._

 

Vernon could feel a wheeze working itself in Seungkwan’s lungs, the rise and fall of his chest and the concentrated warmth in the palms of his hands.

 

“He, he woke up. Obviously. And his security alarm went off, too, so guards were gonna come rushing in any minute. As I’m trying to get away, he pulls a pistol out of nowhere and just _shoots_ my leg, the last thing inside of his room because I’ve climbed onto the ledge by then.” Seungkwan’s inhale rattles. “I kept running, but I was losing a fuck-ton of blood, and I ended up with a dead leg.”

 

“Seungkwan, I wish I were more violent, I’d kill him.” Vernon’s jaw was set.

 

He stared at him. “I didn’t know _you_ would do that for me.”

 

“Not to sound insensitive, but how’d you lose the arm?”

 

“One of his bodyguards shot it. And Boss told me that way if they hadn’t caught me- which they did, eventually, after I found these prosthetics- I would’ve been a cripple for life anyway, and he wouldn’t feel too bad about losing me.”

 

“Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.” Now he didn’t only feel angry, an overwhelming emotion to feel as a previously emotionless boy, but also sad. He hid his face in Seungkwan’s neck and tugged him closer, his fingers bunching up the back of his shirt.

 

 

Vernon didn’t tell Seungkwan where he was going. Probably mumbled something vague about buying the right-sized screws for his new project. He was heading down to the library, the one painted orange with brittle ivy snaking up its walls that he frequented in middle school, to look up symptoms in a medical book. Or ask one of their sweet, pudgy robot-assistants for guidance as he sometimes did, again, when he was younger.

 

He stood in the shadows of the giant, traditional-style bookshelf and scanned it from top to bottom. His shoelaces were untied and his hair was a frizzy disaster. He began pacing the length of this first row of books. The place wasn’t categorized at all, so his best bet was searching through these shelves at random.

 

 _Sexuality, Gender, and Ethnicity (and Why They’re All Constructs)-_ nope. That book fucked him up enough once, and it wasn’t even legitimate. He’d reported it to the library, but they either didn’t care enough to remove it or they hadn’t gotten around to it. Hell, the place was all mothballs and flickering lights and old lady perfume, and it was manned by bots, empty on a good day (and even emptier on a “bad” day) because it didn’t have anything technology couldn't offer.

 

Why was _he_ looking for answers and a diagnosis in a library, then? Because he couldn’t bear to be searching for an answer (one he feared he already knew) with only a thin wall between him and the boy that started all this internal chaos.

 

 _How to Save Your Own Ass: Yakuza Edition_ seemed like something Seungkwan would find to be a useful read. Maybe he should borrow it for him. There he went letting his mind wander to Seungkwan again, a default subject that found its way into every thought of his. The clouds looked like Seungkwan, the porcelain bobtail cats waving their left paws at him as he walked past teashops somehow looked like Seungkwan, the papery blue blimps floating in the sky, tethered to San Fransokyo with invisible ropes reminded him of Seungkwan somehow.

 

He grabbed the book off the shelf and continued looking. He wanted to find some medical guidebook and force it tell him he had a cold, or a flu, or measles or anything. Hallucinations. Hormone imbalance. Anything.

 

 _The World of Homeopathy and Self-Diagnosis_ was grabbed off the shelf before his brain even finished processing the title. The other books next to it all tipped sideways and into where the book’s absence left a gap. He slid a chair out but didn’t even bother sitting in it before opening the glossary.

 

Within twenty minutes, Vernon was able to identify many sicknesses and maladies, but was unable to try to force his own “symptoms” into any of those listed. Because it wasn’t a sickness or a disease plaguing him, as much as he wished it would be.

 

“Fuck.” He kicked the ground, and tucked the medical book back where he found it, carrying only the Yakuza handbook in his left hand.

 

What was he supposed to do now? Call his mom and complain about how good and happy and loving he had been feeling lately? ( _Oh god, no)._ Maybe the robots at the front desk had some help to offer. Robots always helped.

 

“How may I help you?” The robot tucked its marshmallow-like arms away and bowed its head. It had a methodic, mechanical lilt in its voice that reminded him of… he shook his head.

 

“Uh, it’s kind of weird.”

 

The robot’s eyes blinked once. “I am all ears.”

 

Vernon was amused as well as agitated now. “Ookay. So I wanted to figure out why I was behaving so funny lately, looking for a book to help me diagnose it, but I couldn’t match up my symptoms.” He sucked air back into his lungs. “I was wondering if you could help in any way?”

 

“I am equipped with vision designed primarily to scan human bodies, although I do not have much programming on the topic of medical diagnosis particularly. Would you allow me to perform this scan on you, and attempt to notify you of the meaning of the symptoms you are experiencing?”

 

His heart felt weird. It felt like he was going in for a dentist’s appointment, heightened by the librarian robot’s dogmatic way of speaking- and everyone knew Vernon was terrified of doctors and medicine. “Would be appreciated.”

 

The robot squeezed out from behind the desk and positioned itself a few feet away from him. “Please set the book down on the desk. Please inhale, and hold the arms approximately three inches away from the body.”

 

Vernon did as he was told, and the robot’s eyes glowed antifreeze green, eventually expanding into a ray that encompassed Vernon’s body from top to bottom. It stayed that way for a minute, casting the slightest warmth on his skin, before retracting back into its eyes, which returned to an inky black. “Scan complete.”

 

It stood there, tall and gentle and quiet.

 

He was beginning to panic. “... _well_?”

 

Vernon could’ve sworn the robot was smiling. When it spoke, it sounded more human, more intimate and less like a pre-programmed manmade entity, than he’d ever heard a robot sound before. “Neurotransmitter levels have experienced a spike in the last forty-six days. Dopamine and oxytocin have been activated and released. Right ventral tegmental area of the brain is stimulated by constant thoughts. There is nothing else to be said, as all other symptoms only make the meaning clearer. Diagnosis: love.”

 

Vernon was stupid if it surprised him as much as it did. Stupid in love. Head-in-the-clouds stupid. He still covered his face in his hands and leaned against the table. This couldn’t be happening. Vernon, in love? When did this develop? Since when was _he_ capable of this thing called ‘love’?

 

But somehow, it all felt right. All the clocks ticking down, the fact that Seungkwan’s mechanical parts were unknowingly created to fit him _perfectly_ by Vernon years before they’d ever even laid eyes on each other, the fact that Seungkwan could take care of Vernon in ways he could not take care of himself, and the same in reverse with Vernon repairing Seungkwan’s limbs and saving his neck by letting him camp out at his house. It was right, his instincts told him, but he still couldn’t wrap his head around it.

 

All he knew was that his old school buddies had always said he would end up falling in love with one of his inventions, or a robot… Seungkwan wasn’t his invention, nor a robot, but he wasn’t any average guy either.

 

His face opposed his emotions. “Ew.”

 

“Denial is not a good look on you, sweet-heart.” The robot moved over, limbs squishing and squeaking the same way a birthday balloon sounded when being poked, and engulfed him in a bear-like hug. It didn’t even feel like he was artificial and man-made in that moment, because his limbs were warm and Vernon could feel the low hum of his internal machinery, sounding a whole lot like a heartbeat. But it couldn’t hold a candle to that one hug he shared with Seungkwan.

 

“You’re not really helping.” Vernon sulked, but he still buried his face into the folds of chubby inflated synthetics that he assumed were part of the robot’s torso. It felt so good to be hugged, but that was something he would never in his entire life admit out loud. Even if he was coming to terms with the fact that he was, _ew_ , in love.

 

“There, there.” The robot patted him awkwardly. “I do not know too much, but I have read in more than one book that an invitation to dinner, or a “date”, is a plausible plan to propose on your loved one in such a situation. It is something I have found in every romance novel in this library.”

 

He was done mourning his emotions for now (the irony of doing that was lost on him), and he raised his head up. “I think I will. Uh. Thanks for all of this? You didn’t have to."

 

The robot blinked once and nodded happily.

 

“What can I call you?”

 

“The maintenance worker that makes sure I am working well every month is called Alfred, and I like that name. So I am Alfred, too.”

 

“Alfred two?” Vernon held up two fingers, tilting his head sideways.

 

“No, Alfred as well.”

 

“Oh. Then thanks, Alfred.” Vernon patted him on the arm and saluted, the extent of affection and thanks he could offer. But he really was grateful, because somehow he couldn’t come up with that conclusion, or “diagnosis”, himself, and his head felt clear now. That certainly didn’t stop him from almost walking into the automatic doors and almost tripping down the stairs on his loose shoelaces.

 

Alfred fancied he knew a thing or two about love, and he knew that people in love were almost always forgetful and oblivious; he confirmed this when he found that Vernon had forgotten the book he wanted to check out for Seungkwan. Alfred set it aside in his desk drawer in case Vernon came back for it.

 

 

 

Many weeks ago, gardening pleb Vernon had handed Seungkwan a spade (which he’d fingered cobwebs out of the corners of, it was _so_ disused) and a few sachets of assorted ornamental-plant seeds with not many expectations besides that they’d be entertainment to Seungkwan, since he was home-bound and all.

 

Walking in and getting _tangled_ in tendrils of lush, dangling honeysuckle was definitely a pleasant surprise. Vernon had never been one to appreciate organic life-forms much, but even he had to admit that there was something about the lush green glow the plants emanated, the never-sickly sweet smell permeating the room, that calmed his nerves and felt easy on the eyes. The way the sun shined through the shockingly pink bougainvillea leaves but left only the softest touch of that hue on the room. It had Seungkwan written all over it.

 

The boy he was looking for was crouched down, weeding plants and humming to some foreign tune Vernon wasn’t familiar with, probably one of those traditional worker-songs he’d heard some of the boat-operators down at the docks singing. He stood there and listened for a while, lost in Seungkwan’s gentle voice. “Seungkwan, do you have a minute?”

 

Seungkwan jumped and his hand, holding garden shears, ghosted over the left side of his chest dramatically. “I have all the time in the world for you, Vernie, but never scare me when I’m holding a weapon.”

 

It was sarcasm, but that wasn’t enough to stop the gag reflex that came with the "Vernie" nickname. “ _Eugh_. Anyway. I wanted to ask if you were up for going out tonight?”

 

“But I thought-”

 

“-listen, I can drive my bike right up to the backdoor and sneak you out through some back-alley. You deserve to see ‘Frokyo, I… feel bad.” He tried not to squirm or shuffle or claw at his eyeballs for sympathizing with someone else and doing a kind thing for a person. But he chanted to himself Seungkwan was different, and that was true- he didn’t feel uncomfortable or even necessarily grossed out when he interacted affectionately with Seungkwan.

 

“You don’t think Boss’ll catch us?” Seungkwan’s shears snipped and snapped at the stalks of his butter-yellow snapdragons, tossing away dead leaves and withered offshoots in a bin.

 

“Nah. Anyway, you haven’t lived until you’ve tried this place’s sashimi, okay?” Vernon nodded, a sudden spurt of confidence overtaking his embarrassment. All he knew now was that he wanted to feed Seungkwan the best delicacies in the city, show him his favourite places to go.

 

“Okay.”

 

“Cool.” If he could high-five himself for being as relatively smooth as he just was, he would.

 

“...and Vernon?” Seungkwan said slowly.

 

“Yeah?” Vernon whipped his head around, tentative. He had a feeling Seungkwan was going to make some smart-alecky comment, and he didn't feel like getting slandered today, especially not by button-nosed robot boys with twinkly, diesel-coloured eyes. _Especially_ not the one he had technically just asked on a date.

 

“Thanks for being _so_ nice to me. I know I step on your toes a lot, but this is still really nice of you to do,” he gestured generally, waving his arms, “all of it.”

 

It felt like someone slapped Vernon in the face and heart with something laser-beam-hot but undoubtedly pink and mushy. It kind of felt like his heart, caged by lungs and padlocked shut at the sternum, was thumping more obviously than it usually did. He felt like Seungkwan was breaking down those metaphorical lung-gates to get into the deepest part of his heart, the part he opened to no one. In a way, his emotions could be poetically compared to this indoor garden, dusty and disused until Seungkwan sidled in and decided flowers (ahem, feelings) were supposed to be blooming.

 

He didn’t really know how to react. “...I’ve gotta run.” Of course, running from it would totally help.

 

Vernon raced the fire stoking under his skin, and he reached his bedroom hardly before his neck and ears were aglow and traffic-light red.

 

 

So far, so good. They had ripped through a few bushes and _maybe_ flown over a few low garden fences to avoid the main road’s cul-de-sac, where his house was, where the men in black might be waiting, but they ended up speeding down the hill on the regular freeway within a few minutes. Seungkwan relished the feeling of his hair being pulled back from his forehead, hugging Vernon’s waist and shouting to be heard over the ripple of the wind, and Vernon relished Seungkwan’s happiness and the hands that had settled on the tops of his hips.

 

“Is that- are those lanterns hanging across the street from one building balcony to the other?” Seungkwan pointed up at the lanterns, pink paper illuminated by solar-powered electrical candles; Vernon would know the specifics because he helped his mother hang them from their house’s balcony to their neighbors' when he was young. It was a Japanese thing, and although he was Korean, it was implemented in ‘Frokyo’s culture.

 

“What does… _Mic-Donald’s_ taste like?” He whispered into Vernon’s ear after they passed a pop-up shop, red and yellow and smelling of old oil. _That_ was an American contribution to the city, and a fast-food franchise that was nearly two centuries old and nowhere close to drifting into history. Despite wars and revolutionary changes in how the world worked, one thing was always in demand, and it was cheap takeaway burgers and fries.

 

“Never been there. I can take you sometime, though,” Vernon shrugged.

 

“You don’t think any of those men in black saw us leaving, right?” They were at a red light, and both Seungkwan and Vernon craned their necks around to scan the surrounding cars and motorbikes for any sign of their stalkers. The coast seemed clear; it was all couples going out for drinks and barbecued seafood on a Sunday night, or families driving back into the city after a long weekend road-trip.

 

“I don’t think so. I think you’re a free kid now.”

 

Seungkwan didn’t answer, but he stared at Vernon so pointedly, so adoringly, that Vernon held eye contact for a minute and was only jolted out of dreamland when the car behind him honked, because the light was green and he hadn’t even noticed. Seungkwan laughed at his fumbling awkwardness, and Vernon had nothing but a dopey, goofy, toothy smile on his face for the rest of the ride.

 

 

“You’ve brought your servant out to dinner? How kind!” This restaurant was special in the sense that the food was handmade, and the guests were served by actual waiters, not robots and touch-screen menus.

 

Vernon froze and made eye contact with Seungkwan. Seungkwan raised an eyebrow, eyes narrowed dangerously, and turned to the man.

 

“He’s _my_ slave. I’ve treated him to a quick meal for all the housework he’s finally started doing right,” Seungkwan smiled, mock-condescending, as Vernon tried to contain his lips from breaking into another big, goofy one, “don’t judge by appearances next time.”

 

“My apologies. May I take your orders?”

 

“He’ll take the squid sashimi platter and I’ll be having salmon sushi. Now go.” Seungkwan shooed the robot with a flick of his hand. Once the robot was gone, Vernon felt the need to pound the table while laughing loudly and hysterically to get the suppression out. It was funny, but it wasn’t even _that_ funny to him typically, it was just that he was feeling emotions so strongly now, and only Seungkwan evoked laughter like this.

 

Seungkwan looked around at all the people staring at the two of them. When Vernon pounded the table, cutlery and glass had clattered and tinkled. “Was it really _that_ funny?”

 

“I don’t know. I just can’t stop laughing.”

 

“I’m going to hide in the bathroom until you stop making such a scene,” Seungkwan tutted, getting up to walk past Vernon towards the men's restroom but bending down once again to whisper in his ear. “I’m not, actually. I’d still be laughing with you, but I’m going to go wash my hand.”

 

Just when Vernon thought he might liquefy under Seungkwan’s warm, breathy whispers, Seungkwan kissed the shell of his ear and walked away without another word. Vernon clutched it with his hand, as if to keep it from crumbling.

 

 

Twenty minutes later, Vernon was getting worried. He decided that going to the restroom and making sure Seungkwan was just taking a long time sprucing himself up would curb his nerves, so that was what he did. Except it was as if his date (no, he was  _more_ than a silly date) had never even been in there. Vernon’s eyes looked wild in his reflection in the water-flecked mirrors. He knocked on every stall door, and eventually kicked each one open, to no avail. He yelled for Seungkwan, but then had to remind himself that he was in a restaurant and he didn’t want to alert people.

 

It took him pacing and rubbing his eyes until he noticed that the trap window up in the corner of the ceiling was propped open, and there were footprints and muddy scuff-marks on the wall leading up to it.

 

He stood on the edge of the closest sink and tried holding onto the ledge and sticking his head through the window. There was a dingy grey alleyway, shaded by a canopy of electrical wiring overhead, the small sidewalk full of leaking trash bags and bits of industrial waste. He could see car tire skid-marks all the way from the spot right underneath him and up to where this alley merged into one of the main city roads. He gulped air back into his lungs, because he realized he had begun breathing sporadically as he investigated, but he thought he knew where this was going now.

 

Vernon heaved himself up with newfound strength he never knew his noodly arms were capable of, and ducked, rolled, and dropped out the window onto the street. He probably skinned his knees.

 

He ran so hard friction and heat began building up in his sneakers from the intensity at which his feet slapped onto the ground, but at this point in time, if someone poured gasoline on him and flicked a lighter on threateningly, he probably wouldn’t notice or care, so the pain in his feet was the least of his worries. It was a big city, and he and Seungkwan just so happened to be going out to eat in a district as far as possible from the one where Seungkwan’s old workplace was. And he couldn’t go on his bike, because it could alert the kidnappers and get him in trouble, too.

 

 

Vernon was desperately trying to level his breathing and adrenaline without passing out from lack of oxygen intake in his dry, heaving lungs, while sneaking up pressed flat against the building walls. He was susceptible to tripping on his own shoelaces and making attention-attracting noise on a regular basis, so that was hard to regulate as well. He finally edged up near the bar door and got a clear sight of the empty limousine, parked and shiny, that they’d probably kidnapped Seungkwan in.

 

The bar door was tinted automatic glass, which meant he couldn’t see inside but the numerous bouncers and bodyguards could probably see him if he walked past. So he crawled to get across, scratching up his stomach on the pebbly asphalt. Vernon thought he knew where the kitchens were, based on Seungkwan’s descriptions of the place when he was telling his story, and he foolishly thought Seungkwan would already be back washing dishes or something.

 

He wiped a circle in the condensation on the window and peered inside. The only people in the kitchen were the other rogue kids, filling pints and tiny sake shot-glasses and carrying them back on round trays. Vernon swore, and slumped down against the wall.

 

Was Seungkwan being questioned? Interrogated? Quarantined? Tortured? Vernon shook his head aggressively, until his brain was so jittery he couldn’t think those thoughts anymore. Seungkwan would be _fine,_ he half-lied to himself. He might _not_ be fine, he then reluctantly half-admitted to himself.

 

He didn’t keep track of the time he spent sitting there, knees up to his chest and back against a damp cement wall, but he looked into the room and searched for Seungkwan every few minutes. The boisterous noises of humans flirting, gambling, and betting in the bar filtered into his ears every time the bar doors opened.

 

This time, when he peeked into the kitchen, Seungkwan was there. Oh, he was alive! He didn’t appear physically injured, but the expression on his face was darker and stormier than Vernon had ever seen. One of the worker-girls helped him tie his apron and whispered something in his ear. He didn’t respond, walking over to the countertop right in front of the window Vernon was crouched at.

 

Vernon rapped the window twice, as quietly as possible so all the other kids wouldn’t hear. Seungkwan’s eyes shot up, and he covered his mouth with his hands to keep from exclaiming loudly.

 

Vernon tried mouthing words. Key words being _how do I help you get the fuck out of here,_ all of which flew right over Seungkwan’s head. He looked confused, and he kept shaking his head.

 

He sighed, and tried writing backwards in the condensation on the glass instead.

 

_are u okay_

 

Seungkwan raised an eyebrow.

 

_just fabulous_

 

Vernon bit his lip.

 

_i’m going to get u out_

 

Seungkwan wrung out a dishcloth and mouthed to Vernon that it was virtually impossible to escape again.

 

_i’m being watched and all the doors have lasers, fyi_

 

Vernon shivered and looked around him instinctively. So far, no one had noticed his presence here, and no one had noticed that Seungkwan was speaking to someone at the scullery window. They were both lucky enough to have such light hands at writing, because the motion sensors would’ve detected their conversation easily otherwise. It was like tiptoeing through a minefield.

 

Vernon sat there and mulled over all his grand, exaggerated, movie-level rescue mission ideas while Seungkwan began soaping up porcelain plates.

 

_look, ur gonna be out by tomorrow afternoon. i’ve got a plan_

 

The only thing he knew about that one-man plan was that he was going to be taking advice on how to front it from a library book he’d meant to check out weeks ago.

 

_wait for me by the backdoor at 4:30 am_

 

When Seungkwan cracked a smile, some dryness in Vernon’s heart cracked and softened to putty texture too. Seungkwan reached up and wrote four words in the glass before giving Vernon a shoo gesture and walking away inconspicuously.

 

_okay_

_i love you_

 

 

Yakuza never played fair, so he decided his rescue plan didn’t have to be morally just either.

 

He had eight mugs on his desk by the next morning, rings on every paper from the coffee that’d dripped down the side. His eyes were bloodshot, dry, and his eyebags were particularly purple and velvety to the touch. He had the _How to Save Your Ass: Yakuza Edition_ book propped up against his desktop screen, many pages folded down for reference overnight. He’d exerted his brain trying to think of logical, legal methods to rescue Seungkwan, and he had just finally decided that it didn’t need to be fair at all. Or legal, or conventional.

 

Because kidnapping a child off the streets and forcing them into a lifelong contract without their consent wasn’t fair or legal. And Vernon, so calm and emotionless until Seungkwan came around, so hard to anger up until now, _needed_ to splatter hot, bubbling revenge in the captors’ faces. And his plan was a silly, childish thing that was probably far too simple to work against a man like him.

 

All he needed were thirteen of his small, fighter-bot prototypes, a screwdriver, and a distraction. His own tiny but wicked inventions were all he needed to aid him in potentially pulling the rug out from underneath an entire business.

 

 

His faulty watch was on Seungkwan’s wrist, and it was probably still blank anyway, but the ones on the blimps in the sky read 4:30 AM, sharp. It was still dark, so he couldn’t see his own feet as they floored the gas pedal. He couldn’t see his own hands as they clutched his motorbike handles. The entire world felt like it was ticking down. The blood rushing into his ears, the sound of his heartbeat resonating through his body, the sound of the wind as he sped along the empty streets, it all sounded like a wind-up toy being twisted slowly.

 

The brakes squeaked to a stop, either the force of the halt or his adrenaline shooting him off his seat into a standing position as soon as he docked the bike. He jumped onto the curb with his helmet tucked under his arm, like some kind of wimpy teenage superhero. That definitely wasn’t his mental state at the moment; he was considering how possible it was for the entire plan to fall flat on its hollow, clumsy foundation, like a house of cards.

 

As he did the other day, he edged down the familiar alley, this time staying to the middle of the road and feeling the air in front of him before walking, because it was pitch-black and there were no streetlights where the bulbs hadn’t been broken in this part of town.

 

The bar was still closed- he’d assumed as much. He found the back-door latch locked, and he could see the motion-sensors and invisible lasers embedded into the doorway, preventing the servants’ escape, as Seungkwan had told him he would find.

 

It was all very easy to disconnect. Surprisingly stupid of them to leave it so open and simple that a regular fifteen-year-old could decode it in under ten minutes, but what could Vernon expect from a group of stupid slum-dwellers?

 

All it took was one foot into the kitchen before he was engulfed in such a violent embrace that he actually fell flat into a sitting position on the welcome mat. The backpack of doll-sized robots didn’t exactly soften the fall. Seungkwan was flustered and overjoyed, but they couldn’t make any noise in fear of waking anyone up.

 

“Seungkwan. Is the coast clear in the bar… the place where they do the bot-fights, specifically?”

 

“Yeah, the guards come in once it's time to open,” Seungkwan whispered, leading the way once they got up and dusted off their clothes. “This way… I’ll keep guard while you work. That way you can hide and I can pretend I was cleaning if someone hears us.”

 

Vernon blinked in response, and tiptoed across the rather creaky wood floor to get to the rink-like area in the centre of the room, fenced off with velvet ropes. The middle was linoleum, or some other shiny material, and it had long, deep scratches across the surface from all the violent robots ripping each other apart.

 

He lined twelve of his bots so they stood next to each other, dormant and deactivated without the battery and the “on” switch flipped. He sat still for a minute, sizing them up one last time, although he’d _just_ spent the entire night making adjustments just to assure that they could fend for themselves. Oh, they were practically redesigned to kick old man ass at this point.

 

Seungkwan gave him an “okay” symbol with his hands, to tell him that he was still good to go, closely followed by two supportive thumbs up. Vernon didn’t have the time to let his heart get all soft now.

 

He crawled from one bot to another, switching each flip on. Their eyes, previously plain black, began reddening, glowing. These were his _children_ , out picking his fights for him. Again, he might’ve shed a tear, but given the situation, he just patted each of their hand-made heads proudly, before meeting Seungkwan in the scullery again.

 

“Now, show me where Boss sleeps, and wake all the other kids up. Keep ‘em quiet, and I want you to take them to the bus-stop and get them on the next bus headed anywhere far away. Wait for me there, I’ll bring my bike and meet you.”

 

“Vern, let’s just leave now with the other workers. Why do we need to provoke Boss?” Seungkwan whispered desperately, voice cracking mid-sentence.

 

“Because he deserves it. And last time you tried provoking him, it didn't work, so we need to avenge that.”

 

 

_5:00 AM_

 

The backpack was light and empty now, and a weight was lifted off his chest as soon as he bolted down the stairs and out the backdoor. As he shot down the street, he thought he could hear the faintest disturbances, the creaking of an expandable robot and the sound of metal knife-hands sharpening against each other. He was smart enough not to program the robot with a “kill” function (he wanted to evade any legal trouble), but he was evil and savvy enough to install “maiming” and “goring” capacities overnight.

 

Vernon found Seungkwan leaning against his cherry red bike. The cantaloupe clouds looked like they were finger-painted onto a gradient blue ceiling. It was a new dawn, and Seungkwan’s future was as limitless as he had always wanted it to be. He felt overwhelmed with all the time he had in his hands, to do so many great things, but all he knew was that there was one constant that he saw in every vision flashing through his mind. Vernon. Who stood in front of him now, lopsided smile and stupid Einstein hair, who he didn’t know how to even begin to thank or confess to.

 

The stupid plan was a success, and now they didn’t know what to do. So they stood and stared at each other, too overwhelmed with the events leading up to this moment to acknowledge anything.

 

When he finally cleared his throat and opened his mouth to speak, he was interrupted by his own body. The clock inside the motherboard on his neck had randomly begun ticking down, and very loudly. It hadn’t done that in _years_.

 

Vernon jumped. “Is that the-”

 

“Yeah. What do I do?!” Seungkwan patted the nape of his neck down, feeling pressured by the ringing in his ears. It was incessant, and most importantly, it had ruined the moment.

 

“I don’t know! Here, let me see-” Vernon leaned in, hands on Seungkwan’s shoulders, and Seungkwan tilted his chin up at just the right time. His lips and Vernon’s fit together, and the clock subsided in that very moment.

 

They held the kiss for a long while, only breaking away when they needed to. Vernon had his eyes closed, his hands squeezing his temples.

 

The sun was rising steadily, thin yellow rays beginning to colour the world again. It was as though that kiss jolted them back into reality, and the realization that they should probably get out of the area.

 

“Vernon… can you drive us home?” It was painfully obvious that Seungkwan was trying to act casual. Vernon could hear the suppressed happiness in his voice.

 

“No,” Vernon answered simply. Seungkwan, emboldened by the kiss, found the bike’s keys in the back-pocket of Vernon’s pants. He gently forced the helmet onto Vernon’s head and clipped the straps around his chin, kissing his nose when he finished. Vernon didn’t know how to react. He was still too blank and starstruck.

 

“Wait, since when do you know how to drive?”

 

“Duh, I _don’t_. But I’ve seen you do it, and the city’s empty!” Seungkwan defended. “I won’t speed, I promise.”

 

“Let’s go.” Vernon got on the back of his bike, for the first time in his life perhaps, and hugged Seungkwan’s abdomen tightly, tucking his face into the crook of his shoulder.

 

**END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what a long wait... a month and 20 days!! i hope it was enjoyable nonetheless!
> 
> be warned that this is the only chapter in this au with an implied-happy ending. the other ones are all open as this one is, but implied-bittersweet, or at least in the same vein as the jihan chapter.
> 
> heavily inspired by big hero 6, also.


	3. Mingyu and Wonwoo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: mentions of prostitution, depression, and death. An ending with sad (very sad?) implications.

_1926_

 

**_années folles_ **

 

★

 

They met before even knowing they were linked together, before even fate itself had decided that they should know each other. In a way, they broke all the rules; but there were no rules to be broken, rather, there were rules to be bent at will.

 

Wonwoo was still ill-adjusted to living in France. He had an awkward, stuttering grasp on the language and lacked the desire or the drive to improve it. He had an Eiffel tower view half the time and he met plenty of handsome, wealthy Parisians at events, but none of them ignited any desire within him, nothing he wanted to reciprocate or share with them. He hardly talked here, anyway, and it was because of his bad French as well as his growing disinterest with everyone and everything.

 

In a way, the only thing he truly liked about France were the corner cafes and the bakeries. He made it a routine to walk to his favourite cafe every morning, waste a few hours doing nothing, and make his slow, leisurely way back home. He loved the morning sun and the freshness in the air.

 

Today he sat compact in a wickerwork chair, the round, spindly table holding a book and a porcelain cup, both half-finished, black dregs clinging to the edges where he’d tilted the cup to drink. People-watching had always been a preferred activity of his, because as a writer, the world offered him so much inspiration if he only took the time to sit and watch it roll past. That, and the book-reading, and the lazy mornings watching the sun rise and the tiny tables fill up around him, were why he made such a routine of it.

 

He was reminiscent of a cat sitting on a high stone wall, watching its subjects through sharp, glittering eyes. His hypothetical whiskers twitched in the breeze.

 

Checking his pocket for money, he decided that if he was careful about his purchase, he could probably afford to buy himself some more baked goods to entertain his palate on the walk back to the three-story apartment complex he lived in. Yes, and he could even walk back along the banks of the rippling, caramel-coloured Seine river instead of the regular old sidewalk.

 

So Wonwoo went a boulevard or two out of his way until he found a small, rustic sort of hole-in-the-wall bakery, smoke rising from the chimney sticking through its roof. When he pushed his way in, the smell made his mouth water.

 

Facing a rack of cooling baguettes, the steam rose off their dimpled surfaces and made his glasses foggy. Childishly, he raised his finger up so it hovered over the bread, absently ready to poke and hear the heavenly crunch and crackle of the crust caving into the soft white insides, not even thinking of what he was about to do. Not even realizing one of the shop’s workers had been watching him this entire time.

 

 _“Don’t do that!”_ A voice rose behind him. “You’ll have to buy it if you poke it… I’m accepting nothing of that health-code-violating beeswax.”

 

He turned around and came face to face with a young man. The first three things that struck him were; one, that the man’s white toque was lopsided on his head, two, that he had his hands on his hips, saucy and stubborn, and three, that he had streaks of splattered flour on his cheeks and neck. It was an afterthought type of realization when it hit him that this man was another Korean immigrant, like him.

 

Wonwoo was amused despite his face still being relatively free of an expression. His lips were curled at the corners, just slightly. “What do _you_ recommend I buy, then? With only four francs on me?” He patted his pockets.

 

Mingyu gestured at the glass case of eclairs, mille feuilles, croissants, and sweet cheese rolls. “These are the cat’s pajamas, and they’re, hold on,” his face contorted, his eyes rolling up and his nose twitching, and he let out a huge sneeze, cupping his hand over his reddening nose afterwards, “cheap. They’re cheap. Two francs. The flour makes my allergies go crazy, excuse me.”

 

Wonwoo laughed when Mingyu sneezed. “As a customer, I was berated for looking at a baguette closely, but _you_ , a baker, can sneeze onto the display cases and _into your hands_?”

 

“You were about to touch the baguette and ruin it,” Mingyu stated matter-of-factly, shrugging his shoulders.

 

“I only held my finger out, I was not ruining anything.” Wonwoo set the money in the palm of Mingyu’s hand, the cold, marble-white tips of his fingers brushing against Mingyu’s warm, firm palm The stark dichotomy made them both jump. “An eclair, please. But wash your hands first.”

 

“I was _about_ to!” Mingyu’s voice rose again, and Wonwoo’s lips broke apart so that a Cheshire cat grin, stretching from ear to ear, could manifest itself. The man before him was more like an overgrown kid than anything else, and it warmed Wonwoo inside.

 

After being handed his wrapped chocolate eclair, he waved at the man with the lopsided toque who now stood behind the cooling racks, setting the baguettes one by one in paper-lined baskets. Was that a smile on his face, too? Wonwoo did have his glasses on, so he couldn’t say his near-sighted eyes were tricking him.

 

“See you!” the two of them said at once, when both of them knew that Wonwoo was leaving the tiny, insignificant store and merging into a street full of pedestrians. They didn’t even exchange names. But somehow and still, they both assumed they would cross paths again.

 

He probably wouldn’t even remember which street this store was on by tomorrow morning, let alone the place’s name or that a cute, clumsy boy was running it.

 

 

As a result of listening to Parisian people’s vapid conversations about perfume and soirees and the rising jewelry prices, Wonwoo felt physically drained despite being seated in a soft, upholstered pouffe. He had a tall cup of some bitter alcoholic drink, deep reddish-gold in colour, sitting untouched (besides his initial taste-test) in front of him. His Mademoiselle ordered it for him without asking what he’d like to drink, and he’d probably sneakily pour it into one of the planters to make it look like he’d finished it.

 

Mademoiselle had a carved-ivory cigarette holder dangling from her lips, and a small shot-glass of something ruby red and aromatic that she’d called “giggle juice”. Her thin, protruding collarbones were decorated with strings of pearl and diamond, and she had a backwards-folded hat covering most of her shiny chestnut hair. She hadn’t spoken to him at all tonight, but he knew better to think that he’d upset her somehow- today was one of those “off days” for him on the job, where he only really needed to be _there_ physically but not in spirit. Hence why he was allowed to sit quietly on his pouffe, sulking and having an existential crisis at nineteen.

 

His tuxedo was thick and heavy on his shoulders, and the collar and cuffs itched, but he supposed he could count his blessings, because at least he wasn’t made to join in on the stupid conversation, and Mademoiselle wasn’t sitting in his lap like she sometimes did. Wonwoo was so used to regulating his expression from something wrinkled-up and disgusted to something more emotionless and placidly “handsome”, that he had recently been keeping his expression neutral and dead-looking even when away from her, out of habit.

 

“Coco’s new designs are the bee’s knees!”

 

“Did you hear of Harry Houdini’s death! A simple burst appendix, and all my friends were sure he’d die during one of those insane performances of his!”

 

He ripped the tiny platinum cuff-links off and tossed them on the floor, rolling the sleeves up to his elbows and clawing at his wrists, finally letting the skin breathe. He hoped no one would notice, even though the dim lighting was working in his favour.

 

Just as Wonwoo was noticing a bit of something dark purple on the inner side of his pale arm, a woman shimmied over to the low, gilded table where he sat. She was putting on her best bedroom eyes (they were rimmed with thick, sooty shadow and she kept making her eyelashes flutter against her cheeks) and she was clearly drunk, hardly able to keep herself from swaying. “Would you join me for a dance? This song is my favourite.”

 

A jazzy American instrumental began bursting out of the brass, flower-shaped horn topping the record player in the corner. He thought he could see the horn vibrating from the loudness of the recording. Wonwoo looked back at the French woman standing before him, clammed up, and pointed at Mademoiselle. “I‘m… with her,” he mumbled.

 

“I see. Thank you for your time,” she said, bitter as Wonwoo’s drink, turning tail in front of him and swishing her beaded skirt so it rustled against his cheek, as if to show him what he was missing out on. He looked at Mademoiselle, to see if she’d been listening in on the interaction, and found her smiling at him, approving of his response, her arched eyebrows arched even higher. He was so conditioned to please her that he probably deserved be thrown into Pavlov’s kennel.

 

Although it was theorized some fourteen years beyond this period of time, Wonwoo felt more like Schrodinger’s cat inside. Simultaneously alive and dead until someone looked at him and found him in one state or the other, and most importantly trapped in a box with no escape. Until someone opened it and let him out- and he didn’t see that happening anytime soon.

 

He slumped even further down in his chair, trying to read what was on his arms in the weak lighting.

 

_out of butter, remind the milk-maid to bring the weekly load_

_buy green onions for the quiche pies_

_empty the old flour bins and refill_

 

Wonwoo squinted at the wide, neat print lacing the underside of his arm. It was only a smudge of wet purple ink a minute ago, but now it had bloomed into some kind of culinary to-do list. He was too confused and exhausted to try to understand what it was supposed to mean, or where it came from.

 

What he did instead was let himself entertain the thought that his drink had been infused with hallucinogenic drugs. That was a logical enough conclusion for Wonwoo to get behind. He blinked hard and looked down at his arm and it was still there, the ink dry enough not to be glistening and bubbling anymore.

 

A garçon stopped at their table to empty the ashtrays and take away the drained, lipstick-stained cups, and Wonwoo made a “come closer” gesture with a flick of his fingers, to get the boy to bend down with his ear near Wonwoo’s mouth. “Can you lend me a pen?”

 

The garçon was compliant, and he pulled a skinny red one out of his lapel, one that he probably usually used to take orders. If he had been just a bit more of a sly kleptomaniac than he was, he’d steal coins out of Mademoiselle’s wallet to give the boy a tip to express his gratitude.

 

He winced when the sharp tip poked the sensitive flesh above his main arteries, and wrote. The follies of Jeon Wonwoo, thinking he ought to respond to some message that appeared on his arm.

 

_what is this supposed to be?_

 

 

Mingyu was bathing when he saw something black on his arm. He was sitting in a tub full of hot water he’d just painstakingly gathered and heated, soaking the sweat and dust and flour off and scrubbing the dough and sugar out from under his nails.

 

His initial reaction was panic, because it looked almost like blood. He tried wiping it away with his other wet hand, to see the damage of the cut underneath. But all this did was smudge what turned out to be ugly cursive handwriting on his arm. Which puzzled him immensely. He tried to make out the words, but he couldn’t.

 

He got out of the tub- in the nude, hair slicked back and dripping with shiny pink suds, soap foam and water dribbling down his body and wetting the tiles- until he found himself rummaging through his nightstand drawer for the fountain pen he’d used earlier to write that to-do list.

 

He returned to the tub, which was cooling too fast considering he had to spend ten minutes slowly lowering himself into it to avoid scalding, and wondered what he should write in response. Mingyu wondered why he even thought a response was necessary. It was probably a demon possessing him and using his blood to speak to him from inside of his body- which was almost as illogical a notion as assuming it was a message from someone, manifesting itself on his arm. But Mingyu believed superstitions and fables more readily than he believed the words of scientists and explorers, so he was convinced it was supernatural.

 

When he sat down the water rose and sloshed out of the tub and onto the ground like overflowing ocean waves.

 

_what is this?_

 

 

Wonwoo scoffed (anyone watching him would think he was insane, scoffing at himself and making faces at his arm) and licked his lips.

 

Even though these were short, easy sentences, like telegrams almost, his carpals and the joints in the tips of his fingers ached like rusty disused machinery being employed after years of dormancy. He fancied himself a writer and a poet, but in recent times, he hadn’t so much as picked up a quill.

 

_are you mocking me?_

 

 

This time, Mingyu was holding his right arm high above the water and trying his hardest not to send even a drop flying, in fear of erasing the reply. If there was a reply coming his way from whoever, whatever, this was. Soon enough, letter by letter, a longer reply formed on his forearm. In that same ugly, unintelligible scrawl.

 

_no, i hardly saw what you wrote before i rinsed it away on accident. i’m in the bath. but who are you? where are you messaging me from? are you in my body, possessing me?_

 

 

A wide smile, all sharp white teeth and a wrinkled nose, graced his face for the first time since he met that blundering baker a few weeks ago. Whoever he was talking to had not an ounce of shame in him. It was the same clumsy boyishness as that baker, even though he didn’t know anything about the sender yet, let alone their sex.

 

He tapped the pen against his upper lip, a little bit of his playful, thoughtful self seeping through the exhaustion.

 

Wonwoo lowered the pen and began to respond with some enigmatic reply that didn’t reveal his name or age, because it was too early to reveal himself in this surreal conversation with a stranger, where replies etched themselves on his skin. It wasn’t wise, or logical.

 

Mademoiselle’s voice shredded through the words his mind was relaying to the hand that had just begun writing, and he lost track of all he was about to say. “ _Wonwoo_ , tell them about Korea and how we found each other.”

 

He clicked the pen and set it on the table, absently rolling his left sleeve down and knowing he was leaving his anonymous recipient hanging. But what could he do?

 

Wonwoo would finish his reply when they went back to the apartment. Meanwhile, he had to drink the bitter drink (he’d gotten too distracted to toss it out and now it was too late), and feed her friends the same faulty story he’d told them a million times, and listen to them laugh and mimic his thick accent. It was supposed to be romantic- he was pretending to be this woman’s object of affection, after all- but it came out sounding nearly as cold and pallid as he looked.

 

 

Rescued from his war-torn country and brought to a glamorous European city, thanks to his benevolent lover, Mademoiselle Droit? _Far from_. If Wonwoo was in the right company, a safe enough position to react honestly to this bullshit she was feeding everyone, he’d laugh until his stomach hurt.

 

Wonwoo came to France when he was fifteen as an immigrant and a labourer. On his own accord as far as she was concerned, but truthfully, because his father practically pushed him out the door when he heard that a European country was accepting immigrants. He thought Wonwoo would go there, work hard for a few years, get rich somehow, and return and save them from their impoverished, rural lifestyle. His assumption wasn’t exactly wrong.

 

He worked on various construction sites, in slaughterhouses (he can’t stomach much meat anymore), and he even mined for a while. None of it was exciting, and a good swathe of his youth had been taken up by the mundane, laborious jobs.

 

His co-workers had already told him to be wary of older local women. They said philanthropy was big with the upper-class French, and many women had taken to having foreign lovers to curb their sexual appetites (something like a permanent prostitute), and arm-candy so they could brag about how progressive they were.

 

This was where Mademoiselle came into the story. She offered enough money to keep his entire family satiated for years back home, if he acted as her escort and pretended to be infatuated with her. She was socially esteemed, but lonely and middle-aged (and after interacting with her for long enough, he learned she was cruel, too) and Wonwoo was overworked and underpaid and plain _stupid_ to ignore the warning signs and shake her hands and walk her to her, no, _their_ , home that night _._ They were a match made in hell.

 

The one ounce of dignity, the one thing that can keep his head up on a particularly bad day, is that he never succumbed and fulfilled every part of their deal. He made a clear point of disappearing every night at bedtime and reappearing at the front doorstep at dawn, and so far, eight months later, things were still smooth-sailing. He’d never touched that bed or the skin beyond her hands and shoulders, and only his cold, dead body could be forced into doing so. He was a paid, live-in escort and admirer, but not a lover.

 

It was better than being in Korea, and he was being spoiled rotten by the luxuries and opportunities that came with his new lifestyle. Young boys in Korea couldn’t waste their youth walking along sunny streets, spending hours at cafes slow-sipping at their tiny cups of coffee, or using the Arc de Triomphe’s creamy, sculpted structure as a live reference for a lazy afternoon sketch.

 

Young boys there were too busy getting drafted and killed and struggling to make ends meet for their families; he hit the jackpot, so to speak, and he was able to send money back home to support his family financially, and worry not about his own housing and food, because Mademoiselle provided that. She chose his clothes for him, and if they weren’t so itchy and flamboyantly coloured, he wouldn’t mind.

 

So, why did it feel like he was watching the hours flicker past, like he was letting every sunrise and sunset suck a little of the life out of him without even putting up a fight? He was turning twenty soon, and he didn’t know if that felt foreign because time had been going by too fast, or because he’d been feeling much closer to the grave than his age implied.

 

Wonwoo supposedly had a long, full life ahead of him, but he felt like he’d broken the hourglass that had been lazily filtering through grains of sand every day since he was brought into the world, and those grains of sand and time were slipping through his fingers far faster than he had ever anticipated they would, no matter how hard he tried to catch them. He was losing his grip on his own life, and he was forgetting how to live. Stuck but unable to break free, alive but also dead.

 

It was because he wasn’t living, and he wasn’t happy, no matter the wines or the jewels or the Russian contortionists in striped red leotards dancing around him. And he wouldn’t let himself accept that, because he was too riddled with the fear of seeming ungrateful for the privilege and the mercy he had, in comparison to where he could’ve been.

 

 

When Wonwoo woke up and padded to the bathroom to rinse the sleep away, he hit his elbow on the sink edge when he looked into the mirror and his own reflection startled him. _He_ looked okay; purple under-eyes and sallowness weren’t anything new, and he didn’t care about appearances enough to try to remedy his corpse-like complexion, but it looked like someone came and steam-rolled over his face, printing a diary entry across his forehead and over both cheeks. It was probably written overnight.

 

He fumbled with his glasses case, and once they were jammed on, he attempted to read what it said.

 

Wonwoo could understand enough random passages and sentences to get the gist of it, but not the full entry, maybe because of the dimness of the dreary grey morning, and maybe because his mirror was dingy and stained with water droplets and finger-marks.

 

_boring day, baked more than i can remember ever baking_

_maybe it’ll be sunny tomorrow_

_no messages on my arm to look forward to. maybe tomorrow. maybe someday i’ll actually send a message just to start a conversation, instead of pretending i’m writing lists and they’re randomly appearing on this person’s skin. i want to talk to them._

_good night._

 

First, it felt like someone had taken a feather’s cold, pointed tip and was running it down his ridgy spine, sending tingles down to his toes. _No messages on my arm to look forward to._ He had no idea someone could look forward to his boring messages.

 

Second, he realized that _anything_ he wrote, _anywhere_ (meaning notebooks, papers, telegrams, and letters) would appear on the sender’s skin, and the opposite applied too as seen on his face. Which meant that what he’d written in his notebook last night had also bloomed and flourished on the other’s arms, cheeks, breast, or legs.

 

And now, the warmth and the ticklish shyness seeped out of his body and a tint of snowy white replaced it.

 

 

Mingyu dropped a pan of sizzling petit fours so their precious shapes, tiny squares and circles and gently-kneaded ganache dough, smashed against the ground. He didn’t even bother holding back the loud, shrill sob as he watched his beautiful creation in ruins.

 

And this wasn’t just his clumsiness and quite literal _butter_ fingers to blame, but rather the fact that he had noticed paragraphs printed on the backs of both his large, scarred-up hands.

 

He was disappointed in his own hasty reflexes and over-excitement (was he so lonely that the highlight of his day was a message on his arm from a nameless stranger?), but he made himself clean the mess off the floor and his shoes before settling down on the ground. He had his back pressed up against bottom of the display table right at the front of the store.

 

_i’m seeing stars in the words on my arms._

_i think i drank something weird that one night at the party and it never really left my system, because my brain feels like a cloud more than ever, and my eyes are deceiving me and showing me what i know to be impossible._

_maybe i’m wasting my time talking to a ghost, or i’m truly going insane, and i’m inventing characters and people to keep my loneliness at bay._

_p.s: rip this page out and burn it later._

 

Mingyu sighed. What if it _was_ some intricate delusion that he was digging himself deeper into, all a creation in his mind? But, the only thing keeping him from believing that was the angry, sardonic, almost depressed tone this character’s prose was dripping with. That wasn’t from within Mingyu, so it couldn’t be his imagination.

 

But the glass door was just pushed open and the bell jingled, which meant there was a customer waiting to be served right above where he was hiding. Mingyu hauled himself up and tried pretending he hadn’t just been sitting under a display case in his apron and toque.

 

That same boy with the glasses and the sharp eyes that scrutinized him. The skinny tip of his nose like the tip of a snowy mountain at sunset; that is, capped with pink because of the chilly morning.

 

“Ah, it’s _you_!” Mingyu spat, sounding more aggressive than he meant to be.

 

“Yes, it’s me,” he answered, defensive. “It says something about how pitifully low your self-confidence is if you don’t expect a customer to be satisfied enough with your pastries to return for more.” _Ouch!_

 

“Well, you’re here anyway, so _that_ says something about _my_ pastries, doesn’t it?” Mingyu leaned against the counter, putting on a sideways smile so that only one of his wolf-like canines glinted in the light filtering in sideways through the glass storefront.

 

“Stop flattering yourself,” he grumbled, and then, under his breath, “an eclair, please.” He could be rude, but he couldn’t be mannerless.

 

He saw him pick out the best-decorated eclair, the one with the most symmetrical ripples in the custard and the crispiest bread, and wrap it meticulously and delicately in papers. “This one’s on the house, just for you.”

 

Mingyu watched him as he struggled to react to the kindness and keep his disinterested expression, and then just kind of awkwardly shuffle out in a flurry (for the second time). It was coy and awkward, he could read into his body language that much. He was more confident about having made an impression on him now, and he could safely assume that there’d be a third, a fourth, and a fifth visit and plenty more on-the-house eclairs in the near future.

 

(Mingyu was naive and dim if he didn’t pick up on the stark familiarity in this charming man’s mannerisms, and both his word structure and the scathing sharpness of the words themselves, could be compared to something that was on the tip of Mingyu’s tongue- or rather, it was spelled out on the tips of his arms. It gave him deja vu, and it was startling to a petit-four-pan-dropping degree.)

 

 

_what do you look like?_

 

Wonwoo carried a pen in his pocket now, so he could respond immediately when he received a message. He was so eager that he checked his arms and reflection in mirrors and storefront glass and water surfaces for a response many times throughout the day, and he stopped and sat down to think through and sound out his replies in his head before he etched them into his arms, where they faded away within seconds and rewrote themselves on the recipient’s flesh.

 

Currently it was breakfast with Mademoiselle. She had him sit at the opposite head of the table, something he tried to reject until she foisted the request. He avoided her gaze whenever he could feel her eyes burning into him, pretending to be intensely focused on drinking his orange juice and wiping the pulp off his upper lip with a napkin.

 

“Wonwoo, take my telegrams to the office when you’re done eating.” She tapped the small pile of stamped and folded papers next to her breakfast dishes.

 

“Of course. Are you planning another… soiree?” He struggled with his French a bit as it was still broken and he was uncomfortable being imperfect at something (even if it was a second language he picked up relatively recently). Truth be told, he wanted to know if she was planning an event so he could wallow in his self-pity over attending such a thing after breakfast. He _hated_ parties- ironic considering he pretended to be the lover of an esteemed socialite.

 

He and Mademoiselle weren’t on bad terms. Wonwoo _could_ talk to her comfortably, discuss and debate the newspaper headlines and the breakfast they were being served- but he thought that was because he taught himself to be comfortable with her, so as to put on a better act. He couldn’t go around knowing nothing about her and then act the part of a loving piece of arm candy.

 

“No, these are just letters to my colleagues in London. Soiree season begins in high summer.”

 

_does it not come off as either self-deprecating or self-centered to describe your own appearance to someone blind of it?_

_...in other words, what do you imagine i look like? because i don’t trust my own descriptions of myself._

 

Wonwoo watched the letters he wrote melt into his skin and break the laws of everything in the universe by traveling maybe continents away to reappear on someone else’s. The only logical explanations were magic, or a link of some kind between his skin and bones and this person’s.

 

“And don’t wear your glasses to events anymore. They make you look ugly,” she said, matter-of-fact as though unaware of the rudeness of what she was saying. But she was perfectly aware of it, and she didn’t really care.

 

Making a mental note to wear his glasses as often as he could around her, Wonwoo didn’t answer, letting himself stray off for too long, deep in thoughts about Mingyu, and therefore attracted Mademoiselle’s sharp, prying eye to whatever he was doing under the tablecloth. She asked him as much.

 

“Nothing, nothing, I spilled some of the strawberry preserves on my arm,” he answered vaguely, waving her off and smiling in a similarly passive fashion. He hoped he’d erased his inky tracks enough to subdue her interest in his strange behavior.

 

As soon as he excused himself from the oak dining table to “wash the preserves off his arm”, he checked his arms and hands for the small, neat, curling print.

 

_black hair, black eyes? something tells me_

 

Wonwoo was surprised, but his response, as expected, wouldn’t betray it.

 

_would it be rich of me to assume you had the same colouring too, if i were to guess?_

 

Excitement somehow resonated through the words that came next.

 

_yes! how’d you know?_

 

 _lucky guess,_ Wonwoo wrote, and he returned to the table, not checking his skin again until much later.

 

 

It is at an ungodly hour of the morning, that deep, rich part of the night where the sky is at its darkest, waiting for a new dawn to light the entire world up, when Wonwoo rolled over onto his stomach and stretched his arm out above him, cat-like, and saw blurry little bits and shapes that an invisible quill was spelling out slowly and meticulously down the length of his forearm. They were the colour of the sky outside, a royal, nocturnal blue.

 

Mademoiselle had finally figured out to give him a room of his own, adjacent to hers. It took Wonwoo a while to adjust to sleeping in a new place (hence why he always had under-eye circles, because he had been sleeping in random places over the last few months in avoidance of Mademoiselle’s bedroom), so tonight he was as restless as a fish out of water, tossing and turning and gasping for breath.

 

Part of it, he thought, was that he could hear her waking, and he pretended to be asleep, but then he heard his bedroom door creak open and he was sure she was watching him with that unsettling, hungry gaze of hers. He doesn’t know if all the staring and hinting will ever amount to anything, but it remained a nagging worry that she would do something terrible with him, to him, someday and he wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop it.

 

He kicked the blankets off and stretched across the length of his bed to pull his lamp’s string and cast creamy, eye-blinding light on his arm, as it was the most common place to find new letters and notes from his messenger. He spent more time adjusting his eyes to the brightness than he did reading it.

 

_you know what would be the cat’s pajamas? the bee’s knees?_

 

His response was a little dry, carefully masking the fact that he had just been thinking of this person. He had been thinking of their face, and how beautiful he was sure it would be. It was startling that Wonwoo was already halfway in love with a person without knowing how they looked.

 

_i was trying to sleep, but you’ve intrigued me. i don’t know what would be the bee’s knees, but do tell._

 

_if we could meet in real life sometime._

 

Eerily similar to what Wonwoo was just up and thinking about. Their paths intersecting so they could see each other in person, and he could know exactly how wonderful this person was, and hear the animated fullness of their voice uttering these words, rather than having to bridge the gaps and imagine how their words would sound being said aloud.

 

_i would like that. but, i would probably watch you from a hiding-place rather than come out and greet you._

 

As if the concept of shyness was foreign to them, they asked;

 

_why on earth would you do that, you goof!_

_i’m nothing special, nothing to hide from!_

 

Wonwoo scoffed, but he didn’t answer. He could do that now without worrying about ending the conversation, because where he stopped abruptly and gave mild, vague answers that seemed to sway transparently this way and that in the wind, this person compensated with random questions and statements that kept things going between them.

 

_i can’t sleep…_

 

As usual, he spoke not of how much he related and how much of an insomniac he also was, but of something else that caught his attention.

 

_oh, is it also nighttime where you are?_

 

_yeah, it’s very late and very dark outside._

 

Wonwoo was curious now. And maybe curiosity didn’t _always_ kill the cat.

 

_where do you live, if you don’t mind my nosiness?_

 

_paris._

 

Wonwoo gasped. Who would’ve guessed he’d somehow end up talking to someone who could be anywhere around the world, but instead just so happened to be living in the same bustling, glowing city as him? He didn’t have a chance to respond and break the uncanny news that he lived in the same place before more ink blots began taking shape on his arm.

 

_by the way, i forgot to ask you what your name was._

 

“Forgot”, when they’d been talking for months. Wonwoo supposed a name hadn’t been necessary this entire time, as they didn’t address each other or themselves by name or pronoun, and something about preserving the anonymity and namelessness had also preserved the enigma, the exciting, magical feeling of messaging each other and establishing a relationship whose foundation was purely ink and flesh.

 

He paused, his pen hovering over his skin. Should he just spit it out? Yeah, it was probably better than going by an alias.

 

_i’m wonwoo._

 

_it’s a pleasure to meet you, wonwoo._

 

Sleep-deprived and generally unhappy with life, Wonwoo still laughed heartily at this formal greeting, many months too late and too advanced into their friendship to be taken seriously. Thankfully, his laugh is a silent wheeze, so he didn’t have to struggle to keep it low enough not to wake the rest of the apartment.

 

It took a special kind of person to do that. It reminded him of being back home, sharing a bedroom with his little brother and cracking little jokes, silly banter back and forth, when they couldn’t sleep but they’d been sent to bed anyway. He could almost feel the humidity of the summer nights in his village, and smell the tree sap and the wet dirt, and hear the crickets chirping and the frogs croaking. He could almost see his brother’s face, candlelight reflecting off his creamy skin, and feel the roughness of the old, washed-to-shreds cotton blankets against his skin.

 

The vividness of the memories and the homesickness that settled down on him like that humid summer fog felt too heavy to handle. Wonwoo was lonely and unhappy, and it was eating at him from the inside out, leeching all the life and inspiration out of him, and every memory of the times where he felt _normal_ only accentuated how painfully different life was for him nowadays.

 

_my name’s mingyu._

 

That name felt strangely comforting, when Wonwoo tried it out on his tongue. “Mingyu, Mingyu, Mingyu,” he mumbled to himself, rolling over so his cheek was smushed against his pillow, muffling the continuous mantra that eventually lulled him to sleep.

 

 

★

 

 

Wonwoo was going to meet Mingyu in the middle of a bridge crossing the Seine. He didn’t know which feeling was stranger, the slow churn in his stomach or the beads of hot sweat on his upper lip and in the palms of his hands. _Wonwoo was going to meet Mingyu in the middle of a bridge crossing the Seine._

 

It was all scheduled very abruptly and that was part of why it felt like his insides were burning up in shyness, anticipation, and anticipation of his crippling shyness.

 

Repetition and routine were what started it. If Wonwoo hadn’t decided to go to his favourite corner cafe on the left bank this afternoon, for a cup of coffee while reading a few chapters of a good book, his conversation with Mingyu wouldn’t have culminated with both of them mentioning that they were on opposite sides of the Seine river. And that they were ten minutes from a bridge that they could both meet on.

 

If Mingyu weren’t practically stumbling over his own words in his bubbly excitement to meet Wonwoo, and he hadn’t suggested that they meet at the midpoint of the Pont Neuf (the bridge), he wouldn’t have agreed to meet him. If Wonwoo weren’t stupid and practically misspelling his words in his slightly more subdued excitement to meet Mingyu, he wouldn’t have agreed to meet him.

 

Wonwoo was only subdued because he was worried about seeming much worse than he’d vainly painted himself out to be when talking to Mingyu. He wanted to impress this person, but it had been _years_ since he’d felt and looked his best. He was past his prime.

 

“Oh, well, I still have a half-hour to kill,” he mumbled to himself. The sky was a deep blue and there were cold clouds, and Wonwoo halfway hoped it would begin pouring so he could turn back and promise to meet Mingyu on another day, when the weather conditions are better.

 

He stopped when he reached a place in the road where the bridge entrance was near, and watched the small boats chugging through the arches of stone embedded across the river that held the bridge up.

 

Wonwoo wasn’t familiar with this part of Paris, but after a look around and brief struggles deciphering the store name, he entered a clockmaker’s shop to _pass the time_. Besides patting himself on the back for his own hilarious joke, he figured he’d be able to keep track of the time in a place like this, floor-to-ceiling of cuckoo clocks, mantel clocks, grandfather clocks, and every other kind imaginable. He called out for the shopkeeper, peeking behind clocks and into the backroom but finding no one.

 

Some had smooth, glossy wooden carvings that he ran his fingers through, swiping dust and cobwebs, and some had polished brass statues of horses and nude Greek goddesses posed so they were holding the clocks strategically between their hips.

 

One was clearly the centerpiece, playing the same role as the Eiffel Tower did in Paris but for this store, standing in the center on an elevated platform. It was an all-glass grandfather clock, the sharp cuts in the sides reflecting sea-glass green where the rest of it practically glowed silver. There wasn’t a fingerprint on its surface, and the hands inside of the face were of pure gold, ticking and tocking.

 

Wonwoo was a pickpocket when it came to Mademoiselle, but he wasn’t a thief, but he thought it stupid of the shopkeeper to leave such a spectacle out on display, as it was so easy to steal. And Wonwoo was polite and respectful, but he was still an impish child at heart, and smudging the impeccably clean surface with his grubby, clammy hands seemed like a good idea to him. Just to _touch_ it and feel the cool glass, just like he wanted to touch the bread and hear the crunch at the bakery.

 

When he touched it, the machinery inside of it gave one ominous click, and in the reflective, silvery face of the clock, he could see tall blue buildings. White fog curling around them. Giant blimp-like objects in the skyline, and flyers and storefronts mostly in Japanese. A cherry red bridge on which a cherry red motorbike sped, carrying two young boys. The motorbike was nothing like what he’d seen before, smaller and faster and impossibly futuristic.

 

And like that, in a split-second, the image disappeared like it was never there, like Wonwoo was hallucinating all along, but what he did know was that the clock’s hands ceased to move, probably frozen forever. Even when he tapped the sides of the glass to try and get them to move, they stuck in their places. He’d broken a priceless clock just by touching it.

 

He was running late for his meeting with Mingyu by now, and his entire body was drenched in a cold sweat. He didn’t know what to do, and he was afraid of getting into serious trouble even though he did nothing (being an immigrant, people often assumed he was intending to cause trouble), so he whistled his way out of the store as inconspicuously as possible.

 

 

Once he was crossing the bridge, he forgot about the clock and was then aware of the stiffness in his joints and the reluctance in his steps.

 

But, soon enough, he reached the other side of the bridge and, being mostly empty, it was easy to spot the “tall, dark-haired” figure Mingyu told him to look for when searching for him. So it was a man, and he was turned around, dressed in a smock and frayed grey pants. Taller than Wonwoo, by the looks of it.

 

Wonwoo stood a few feet behind him, stopping and breathing in. His reserved nature prevented him from being smooth about the whole thing, so he had absolutely no idea how to call attention to the fact that he’d arrived. He just stood there, none of the thoughts flickering through his mind making it to his facial expression, which remained neutrally tight, compact, blank.

 

Mingyu seemed to have sensed a presence hovering behind him like a clingy, hesitant ghost, and he turned to see if it was the writer he’d been waiting months to meet.

 

Wonwoo gasped, but it wasn’t only because Mingyu was beautiful; he was absorbing the shock of this man’s face being completely familiar. All he was missing was a toque and apron.

 

“Oh, no no no no.” A muscle in Wonwoo’s jaw twitched. He didn’t know why he had such an aggressive initial reaction; it was probably because he felt so boring and half-baked at this point in his life, and both people he’d wanted to make an impression on in recent times, the cute baker and his messenger, were now apparently the same person. And they were “both” standing in front of him right now. “Why _you_?”

 

“Oh, that’s nice,” Mingyu responded, crossing his arms. His sleeves were folded up to his elbows, and Wonwoo could see tiny scars on his forearms, from where he’d scalded himself brushing against hot, oiled bread pans and oven-dishes. “We skip right over the hellos and start with the unnecessary anger?”

 

It was unbelievable that the anonymous person he’d been obsessed with had been this clumsy, sneezing mess of a chef all along. It was so ironic, like fate’s way of slapping him in the face.

 

At the same time, it fit too well. The way Mingyu wrote and spoke had parallels, and part of the reason why he was so childishly aggressive to Mingyu in the first place was because he was cute and hostility was his way of covering up feelings he didn’t want to seem obvious. _Of course he was a baker_. The very first message Wonwoo received was a list of ingredients he needed to pick up and things he needed to do at the bakery.

 

Anyway, it was just a crush, just as his crush on the person he messaged- he interrupted his own thought here, realizing he was beginning to mentally compare two crushes he’d had on the exact same person.

 

“So, how am I expected to believe that it’s actually you I’ve been messaging all this time? And that you aren’t some impostor that’s been stalking me?” Wonwoo asked, half-joking to break the wall of ice he’d just built with his hostility, and half-seriously suspicious.

 

“Listen, why would I stalk you and read all the stuff on your skin… never mind, just look,” he stuck his forearm out in Wonwoo’s face, whipped a fountain pen out of his pocket, and began writing.

 

_is this enough proof for you?_

 

Being Wonwoo, he read what Mingyu wrote on his arm before actually checking his own skin for the words. By the time he’d rolled up his dress-shirt sleeves and found it on the soft part of his forearm, Mingyu had such an obnoxious smile on his face as a result of proving his authenticity to Wonwoo, that Wonwoo struggled to keep his composure.

 

“So, let’s start over.”

 

Mingyu was a good sport, and such a pure disregard for other people’s misguided words was so opposite Wonwoo’s bitter, grudge-holding ways that he actually stepped back when Mingyu gave him a big, toothy smile and held out his hand to shake. _“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Wonwoo."_ He repeated the same words he’d written, the ones that had made Wonwoo laugh and now made him smile.

 

He shook his hand, cold skinny fingers meeting warm, firm ones and once again making them both jump. They were like salt and sugar, or maybe fire and ice. A pale, crater-ridden moon orbiting and orbited by a seemingly-bouncing, twinkling star.

 

“Is your skin always this warm?” Mingyu radiated such a cozy, gentle, teddy-bear-like warmth that it made Wonwoo stop short of wondering what it’d be like to hug him, or if sharing a bed with him meant he hardly needed blankets for warmth in the winter.

 

“The real question is, is yours always this cold?” The tips of Wonwoo’s fingers are even blue sometimes, regardless of the season, and his skin is always as cool as its paleness implies.

 

“I imagine you’ve spent so much time next to ovens that you’ve absorbed a little bit of that fire and coal yourself,” Wonwoo reasoned.

 

Mingyu laughed good-naturedly, letting Wonwoo imagine and assume. It wasn’t like he knew why his skin was warm; it was as uncontrollable as having black hair or being too tall for most doorways. “So what’s the excuse for your cold skin, if that’s the case with me?”

 

Wonwoo answered with the intention of some dry, depreciating joke, without realizing how sad and hollow it’d sound when it hung in the air and Mingyu chewed on the answer for a few silent, contemplative minutes. But it was alright, because he was telling the truth and at least Mingyu didn’t pity him for being depressed. “No job that happens to have you spend your day in a furnace, and not much physical affection to keep me warm, I guess.”

 

Mingyu was gracious, and expert at reading into body language that was written all over Wonwoo much like the words Mingyu wrote to him once were. His arms were crossed to bar himself off from any more questions, and his head was turned away from Mingyu’s, so he only saw his sharp profile and tufts of his hair being blown around in the breeze.

 

“I made us lunch, because I thought we’d want to sit by the river and, you know, talk face-to-face for once,” Mingyu offered, gesturing to a bundle wrapped in red flannel cloth, probably fresh bread and Brie cheese and whatever else he could scrounge from his cupboards. Wonwoo felt like he could feel Mingyu’s warmth and kindness flowing off of him in waves and piercing into his cold skin, making his blood a little hotter and his heartbeats a little faster.

 

“I didn’t bring anything, but I can go buy us some coffee from that cafe while you find a nice place to sit?”

 

It had gotten clear and sunny for a moment, but now clouds were gathering above them and it’d be best if they found somewhere shielded by the bridge to sit under, in case of a downpour.

 

“ _Ab-so-lute-ly_ ,” Mingyu said, holding their lunch bundle close to his chest and going off to find a place to begin laying out their meal on the picnic blanket.

 

 

They were sitting in the shadows under the bridge, legs dangling over the edge, still very high above the water. Wonwoo was watching the raindrops land on the water’s surface when Mingyu asked him another question. “What do you work as?”

 

“It’s a confusing job, I’ll explain another time. Plus, I’m tired,” he answered.

 

“I get it…” Mingyu seemed to have grasped early on that if he didn’t talk, Wonwoo definitely wouldn’t, given his already succinct answers. “View’s nice from this spot,” he said, although he was looking at Wonwoo, who was looking at the view.

 

Wonwoo wanted to make some witty little comment about it, but he refrained. “Even nicer at night, if you ask me.”

 

“Then will you promise to meet me here again at night, someday?”

 

Wonwoo looked at him curiously. “I didn’t know you were so invested in being around me.”

 

Mingyu turned away quickly, displaying the same kind of body language as Wonwoo earlier, but because of being confronted and being too shy to want to say anymore, and thus closing himself off. “Why do you have to put it like that? You make it weird.”

 

“So you _are_ capable of being shy.”

 

Still, when they parted ways in the middle of the bridge, each walking off in the opposite direction, backs turned to each other as though they were strangers once again, Wonwoo wrote something on his hand, and hoped Mingyu would see it sooner rather than later; a small _i promise i will._

 

This time, when he merged off the bridge and onto the busy, pedestrian-filled streets, he didn’t feel at all like they’d separated. When he stood by the railing and tried finding Mingyu on the equally-busy street across the river, he saw no one, but he felt nothing of those feelings about losing Mingyu forever in the crowds of people; he felt a connection from deep within both of them form, and he was positive they’d be together constantly whether by chance or “fate” or something else.

 

 

Suddenly, noiselessly, warm hands wrapped around Wonwoo’s face so they covered his eyes, whoever they belonged to standing behind the chair Wonwoo was sitting in. “ _Pssst._ Guess who I am.”

 

“You’re not cute at all, Kim Mingyu,” Wonwoo grumbled, manually removing the hands so he could see again, and craning his neck up to look at the goofy smile and curving, sparkling eyes. He could’ve guessed just by the voice, or the warm hands, or the playfully intimate way Mingyu had taken to acting around him lately.

 

That wasn’t to say he didn’t like it. And Mingyu knew Wonwoo didn’t mind despite the way he acted, which was why he kept at it.

 

“Here.” Wonwoo thrust the full cup of black coffee, hot and untouched, up into Mingyu’s face, and patted the chair next to him for him to sit on.

 

“What, did you poison it or something?” Mingyu sat, drank the entire cup in one go, and sighed contentedly. He was wearing his work clothes; houndstooth canvas pants and a white apron.

 

“Do I look like the kind of person to carry around vials of cyanide just to poison people?” _That’s more like Mademoiselle_ , he thought to himself.

 

Mingyu gave him a pointed, sidelong look, and before the gaze was held for long, both of them crumbled and laughed into their hands.

 

“You’re mean,” Wonwoo said. “Anyway. Why are you here?”

 

“I was going to _Les Halles,_ y’know, the food market, but I saw you here and I had wanted to ask you something, so I came.”

 

“Hmm? I’m listening.” He was feeling so light and bouncy on that day that he thought the wind might pick him up and carry him away. It was a good state of mind to be in, and it brought clarity and a happier flavour to his words and voice.

 

“Are you free tonight?”

 

“ _Oh..._ it depends?” He answers, wondering whether to just spill it all. “I have a soiree I’m supposed to be attending with someone; I’m actually waiting to meet someone right now.”

 

It was true. Soiree season had begun- it was high summer- and Mademoiselle was bustling about, planning one for every June and July evening. She was buying Wonwoo new tuxedos and cuff-links and top-hats, and he’d somehow managed to slip out of the shopping trip by offering to wait for her at a corner cafe.

 

Mingyu’s expression dropped very visibly. He was bad at hiding his disappointment. His voice even sounded subdued and small. “I get it.”

 

“No, but why were you asking if I was free? Maybe I can work something out.” Wonwoo was unfazed, but he was trying to get Mingyu to understand that the soiree wasn’t important to him, and neither was attending it; if he could explain that it was part of his job without arousing Mingyu’s curiosity and getting himself into a full explanation, he would.

 

“It’s nothing. I won tickets to one of the dance halls that open at midnight, and I was wondering if you had wanted to come with me.”

 

“Oh! That sounds fun,” and Wonwoo’s openness and readiness to attend didn’t only surprise Mingyu, it surprised him too. He couldn’t remember a recent time where he was this excited to do something. “I think if you wait for me here at 11:25, I can sneak out and meet you. How does that sound?”

 

Mingyu sealed the plans with a nod and when he stood up to leave, he shook the table and made the empty coffee cup tip over in its saucer. Fixing it hastily, he blew Wonwoo a small kiss, and Wonwoo was sure it was for fun and jokes, but that didn’t stop him from being startled and endeared by the gesture.

 

 

Somewhere in the evening, when Wonwoo was following Mademoiselle around and patiently drowning out all her complaints about the mistakes in the arrangement, she said something that actually caught his attention.

 

“The contortionist is American, but I guess you can’t always get Russian,” she reasoned.

 

“That’s true,” Wonwoo said for the fiftieth time- he’d have to begin varying his responses so she wouldn’t realize that he was just spitting out whatever satisfied her.

 

“I’m also looking for a new caterer.”

 

“Hmm?” Now he was actually listening to what she was telling him.

 

“What, do you know someone?” Mademoiselle asked, pausing for a minute to straighten one of her huge gilded oil paintings. She turned to him, and like always when she looked at him, he saw that expression in her eyes that scared him, made him want to back away or cower under her gaze. It felt like her eyes were eating at him, boring into him like daggers. And there was something like lust in there. She probably thought he was playing hard to get by not letting her get intimate with him, and she was getting hungry.

 

He tried not to shudder. “I don’t know. I mean, I _might_.”

 

“Well, if you do, don’t go around keeping it from me. The important thing is that it’s someplace that can make a large quantity of pastries and pies and tortes, and whenever I request them.”

 

“Uh-huh.” He had an idea, but he’d have to ask Mingyu if he was alright with the partnership first.

 

 

Wonwoo was not only feline in appearance, but elusive and sneaky in nature. Sneaking out of Mademoiselle’s party without her noticing his absence was a piece of cake. But he had to wait.

 

First, he changed out of his flashy, glossy tuxedo and into his usual baggy, held-together-by-suspenders uniform. He wasn’t one for fashion, and the last thing he wanted was to stand out as the only man in a freshly-tailored, upper-class suit when going to a shabby dance hall. He just wanted to have fun with Mingyu.

 

Second, he rinsed his neck and hands of all the cloying perfumes the women wore that seemed to stick to his skin, and checked his reflection in the mirror. Before a party where hundreds of socialites were present, he couldn’t care if his hair was sticking up or his teeth looked yellow, but when going out with _Mingyu,_ everything mattered.

 

And the third and final step was to wait until the party was at its peak in terms of noise and commotion and excitement, preferably when the shiny white balloons were raining down from the ceiling and the gymnasts were entertaining by fitting themselves into tiny boxes atop the empty dinner tables.

 

And when the time was right, he climbed through his open bedroom window and down the two-story fire escape. He dusted himself off and hoped no one had seen him escaping, but he didn’t linger long enough to check if anyone had.

 

Mingyu was waiting for him by the cafe, bouncing and swaying in place.

 

“Are you drunk already?” Wonwoo scoffed.

 

“Nope, I don’t really drink. I’m just happy.” The age difference between them wasn’t much at all, but their behavior implied twenty or thirty years’ difference. Mingyu felt young and bright and energetic, and Wonwoo was bogged down by silly follies and sadness and self-pity. Around Mingyu he became another person, though; he felt like he could waltz all night and _swim_ upriver to get back home rather than walk, and still have energy to spare.

 

As they made their way to the hall, they passed under streetlights, where yellowness pooled around them and put them in a temporary spotlight, perfect for stealing glances at each other.

 

“You look good,” Mingyu said, unaware that he’d alerted Wonwoo of the fact that he’d been looking down at him every time he could, soaking in everything about him.

 

Wonwoo fiddled with his suspenders and smoothed his fringe back, glaring up at Mingyu. “You look like you always do,” he offered stiffly.

 

“Oh?”

 

But Wonwoo could see the effort Mingyu had put into his presentation tonight, and he could smell the soft aroma of soaps and balsams on his skin and see the meticulously folded collar of his shirt, so that was a terrible lie. “It means you always look good,” he said, stubbornly refusing to look up at Mingyu and see what kind of expression he wore on his face upon hearing that.

 

Wonwoo pulled Mingyu closer when they passed by a cluster of people on the sidewalk, and something must’ve possessed him, because he didn’t let go of Mingyu’s arms and shoulders until they reached the entrance to the dance hall.

 

The walls were covered in brightly-painted frescoes, pink and red and silver. Huge chandeliers hung inside of crimson fabrics that cast deliciously filtered red light down on the dancers. In the far corner, there was a band of men readying their clarinets and trumpets for the first jazzy instrumental of many. This place didn’t close until dawn.

 

Mingyu and Wonwoo stood against one of the arches on the edge of the hall, waiting for midnight and the music to begin.

 

Wonwoo couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of the one mistake in coming here until this very moment. “Mingyu, isn’t it kind of… unorthodox for the two of us to be dancing together in a room full of men and women partnering together?”

 

Mingyu furrowed his eyebrows. “It’s not like _we’re_ together or anything.”

 

 _“Yeah, of course I know_ that _,”_ Wonwoo stuttered, losing his composure at the thought. “I meant, won’t these people get strange ideas and alienate us anyway?”

 

“Once the music starts, I doubt anyone will be able to keep their eyes off the girls they’re dancing with.”

 

Mingyu was right. The moment the trumpeter put his lips to the mouthpiece, the room was a whirl of arms, legs, floating, swishing dresses and men whose eyes and hands couldn’t stay off their girls.

 

And Mingyu and Wonwoo started off awkwardly, but they picked up soon enough. They merged into the crowd, and Wonwoo found himself guiding Mingyu through the dances as he’d learned from Mademoiselle, telling him how to step and trying not to wince when he trod on his toes. Soon enough, they were in a graceful rhythm of their own, and Mingyu’s hand was on Wonwoo’s hip, as Wonwoo begrudgingly had him assume the “man’s” role in the dance due to their height difference.

 

When Mingyu got stuck on the fox-trot for too long because the footwork was easy for him to remember and he didn’t want to do something harder, Wonwoo suddenly tipped Mingyu down, hand on the small of his back and his face inches from Mingyu’s, smiling slyly down at him.

 

Mingyu was smiling nervously, having been literally swept off his feet by a man previously timid and quiet. The room was so crowded and everyone else was so concerned with each other, that it was like dancing shrouded in thick fog, like no one was even there but Mingyu. And much like the way the men and women couldn’t keep their eyes off each other, Mingyu and Wonwoo had ceased to notice their surroundings.

 

Mingyu spun him around, and Wonwoo could see the twisting blurs of colourfully-dressed, flamboyant people behind Mingyu, but it didn’t register at all. All he could see was his messenger’s face, the one whose hands were holding him tight so he didn’t fly out of their endless twirl, and the only thought that registered was that he was more beautiful than he’d ever imagined him to be.

 

They left at half past three, hair sticking to their sweaty faces, stumbling but only because of the pleasant soreness in their limbs from spending hours dancing non-stop. They didn’t even stop in the gaps between songs, and after they’d broken the ice of dancing together for the first time, they no longer cared or noticed if anyone was staring at them. They were having too much fun in their own little world.

 

“If you’re too tired to walk… I can carry you,” Mingyu mumbled, accidentally bumping shoulders with Wonwoo.

 

“I’m alright, but thanks.” There was a bench under a tree, and Wonwoo collapsed onto it. Mingyu joined him.

 

“I can’t believe you taught me how to dance.”

 

“We mostly did everything _but_ dance in that _dance_ hall _,_ ” Wonwoo responded, laughter erupting mid-sentence and peppering the rest of it with low giggles. “Thank you for inviting me.”

 

“Thank you for coming. How’d you learn how to dance?”

 

“I picked up a few things from observing couples at parties, it’s part of my job.”

 

They sat in comfortable, natural silence for a few minutes, Wonwoo looking out at the yellow city beyond them and its blurry reflection in the river, and Mingyu gazing so fondly at Wonwoo that he surprised him by turning, catching him off-guard and in the act, and asking him what he was doing. “I’m resting my eyes,” he answered pointedly.

 

“Resting yours eyes on me, Mingyu?” Wonwoo stared at him, bringing his face a little closer to Mingyu’s, his lip corners upturned in a pleasant, amused half-smile and his eyes sparkling, and Mingyu stared back. It seemed that every time he looked at Mingyu lately, whatever was in the foreground behind and around him became blurry and irrelevant. Wonwoo’s thoughts even became blurry and fuzzy around the edges, and for a minute, his brain was full of nothing but fluff and bliss.

 

Mingyu leaned in, almost sealing the distance between them, his nose a few inches from Wonwoo’s. His face was unreadable until Wonwoo realized it was hesitance keeping him from bringing their faces together, but desire making his eyes close and his chapped pink lips stick out. And if Wonwoo could see his own face, it was playfully challenging Mingyu to just lean in a few inches further and kiss him. Then he realized what his fuzzy brain had led him into, and he retracted to his original position, killing the romantic suspense.

 

“And that reminds me. Does your place do soiree catering?”

 

Mingyu looked thoroughly embarrassed. His eyes kept flitting up to search Wonwoo’s for an answer as to why he pulled away.

 

“Yeah… but why?” he tilted his head to one side when he was puzzled. And Wonwoo found himself so endeared by it that he had to look away yet again, so he could concentrate.

 

“So, remember how I told you I had a confusing job…” And Wonwoo explained about his occupation as Mademoiselle’s significant-other-but-not-really, and how it worked. How he lived with her, went to every party with her and listened to her drone and criticize, nodding and pretending to take it to heart, how he let her govern most of his life choices because the pay was so much higher than any other job in Paris. He felt shallow and spineless for letting money govern him into such an oppressive job, but he wouldn’t ever tell anyone that, not even Mingyu.

 

“I’ve heard of that kind of thing. A lot of people who were immigrating at the same time as I was said they would look for a “Madame” as soon as they got to Paris.” Mingyu wasn’t judgmental and he didn’t pity him or tell him something he already knew like other people did, and Wonwoo was hit once again with those intensely warm, positive feelings that seemed to overtake him when he was around him.

 

“So that’s that. And she wants a new caterer because she’s fickle and she goes through them like she goes through her cigars-” Mingyu chuckled, “-so I thought you might be interested.”

 

“It’s a good idea, I’ll talk to my boss tomorrow. But does it mean-”

 

Wonwoo interrupted him, knowing what he was going to ask and having an answer ready, because this answer was the entire reason he’d even thought of proposing this idea to Mingyu. “We _will_ see each other at every party.”

 

 

Mingyu set the tables, spreading pastries on tiered plates and re-frosting sweets that got even the slightest scuff on the car-ride here. He arranged napkins and wiped the tables, which wasn’t part of his job as much as his way of trying to impress Wonwoo’s Mademoiselle into keeping their catering services.

 

The catering company was there a few hours before the event, to set things up before people begin arriving. Mingyu was done with his job, and he was supposed to be in the kitchen now, hiding away until someone at the party needed him to refill a plate or describe the ingredients of the baked goods. But he was waiting for Wonwoo instead.

 

He stood in the middle of the empty, decorated salon, twiddling his thumbs and casting glances at the staircase that he was sure lead to the bedrooms. He didn’t know if Wonwoo was getting ready for the event or if he was out somewhere, but he was hoping to see him before it was time for him to go.

 

When Wonwoo finally came down the stairs, Mingyu had to keep from smiling _too_ widely, because Mademoiselle was trailing behind him. Luckily for them, she spared Mingyu a glance, and after deciding she was disinterested in pursuing what he was telling Wonwoo, she walked through a doorway and into some other part of the house.

 

Wonwoo elbowed Mingyu’s side as a greeting, and pointed at a tray of assorted petit-fours. “Which of these do you think I would like?”

 

“This one.” Mingyu picked up a fudgy white chocolate square. He wanted to feed it to Wonwoo, but he realized that was maybe pushing it too hard, so he put it in Wonwoo’s hands instead and watched him take a bite. Crumbs stuck to the corners of his lips. “Mmm. I can’t believe _you_ could make something so delicious and delicate.”

 

He pretended to be offended, but his smile is just soft and goofy. He didn’t care if Wonwoo calls him clumsy, because he knew he doesn’t mean it; countless instances where Mingyu was delicate and gentle with Wonwoo prove otherwise. The two banter on until people begin filling the room and Wonwoo reminded Mingyu that he shouldn’t linger around him for too long, in case anyone noticed them. Mingyu left for the kitchen, and watched Wonwoo follow Mademoiselle and pipe into her conversation, appearing amiable and friendly.

 

 

At the next party, Mingyu set up the tables as usual, but instead of waiting for Wonwoo, he left the house, headed around the building and into the alley where the fire escape that led to his bedroom was located. Mingyu climbed it, one hand on the rusty metal and the other holding a pastry box, and he crouched down when he reached the top, in case anyone was in there.

 

He rose up enough to stealthily skim over the surface of Wonwoo’s dark room, to make sure he wasn’t sitting in there. All Mingyu saw were the vague shapes of wooden furniture and soft bedding.

 

Mingyu slid it onto the windowsill, wrestling open the window latch so the box would be immediately visible when Wonwoo switched on the bedroom lights.

 

It contained a raspberry tart and an assortment of those same white chocolate petit-fours, and a tiny strip of paper bearing three words that needed to be said a long time ago. Of course, Mingyu writing them meant they’d appeared on Wonwoo’s skin, but neither of them had been bothering to check their skin for letters lately, because they saw each other so often otherwise.

 

When he went back into the apartment, he was pleased with himself, and he knew it’d take until tomorrow for Wonwoo to see the box and (hopefully) accept his confession.

 

Little did he know that minutes after he’d climbed down the fire escape, Mademoiselle unlocked Wonwoo’s bedroom door, switching on the brightest lights in her search for him. She found it empty of the young boy she was so lustful and possessive of, but she found a pretty box tied with purple ribbon to entertain her instead.

 

 

Mingyu was hauling huge burlap sacks of wheat from a shop to the back of the bakery truck. Wonwoo trotted up behind him and tapped his shoulder gently, whispering into his ear. “Can I ask you something?”

 

“Oh, c’mon, not now,” Mingyu huffed, very uncharacteristically, and removed Wonwoo’s hands.

 

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

 

Mingyu shrugged, and refused to turn around and look at Wonwoo.

 

He spun Mingyu around by the shoulders to face him. He searched Mingyu’s eyes, and he was lucky Mingyu was his opposite and displayed his feelings too readily, because he could see he was hurt somehow.

 

“ _You_ should know,” Mingyu said, sulking. He triple-tied one of the burlap sacks, using too much force when squeezing the knot, and threw it, again too aggressively, into the back of the truck. He was childish like this sometimes, and it was such a rarity in his otherwise pacifying personality that Wonwoo knew how to deal with it.

 

“What did I do?” They were standing in the middle of a street surrounded by the marketplace, merchants and grocers bustling around them, and it was possibly the worst place to get Mingyu to spit out what was upsetting him. Because Wonwoo felt like he knew what it was, and he knew they needed privacy when discussing it. “Nevermind. Do you know of an empty, secluded place anywhere around here, so we can talk?”

 

Mingyu pointed at a door in the backroom of the store he’d just been buying wheat from, and followed Wonwoo like a shadow when he stalked over and let them both in, before shutting the door lightly behind them. It was a storage room, full of ceiling-high piles of hay and wheat and barley. It smelled like harvest season in Wonwoo’s village, dry and earthy and sun-ripened.

 

He rocked back and forth from the tarsals of his feet to the tips of his toes. “So? What did I do?”

 

Mingyu avoided Wonwoo’s eyes until Wonwoo lifted his chin and fixed his face so it was looking straight at him. His lower lip was sticking out. “You didn’t do anything, _I guess_.”

 

“I clearly did, or you wouldn’t be acting like… this.” He gestured in Mingyu’s direction, waving his arms around.

 

Mingyu sighed. “Just tell me if you like me already. You’re always pushing and pulling and I can never tell because you’ll never show me enough of your feelings.”

 

 _So that was it._ That was all it was. Wonwoo started to laugh in relief, on accident. “You’re really kind of strange, you know…” Mingyu mumbled.

 

“Have you ever been with anyone before, Mingyu?” Was all Wonwoo said, his voice kind of low even though there was no need to be. No one was here- but it was his timidness peeking through, even though he could take the lead now, knowing that Mingyu reciprocated his feelings.

 

Mingyu giggled nervously, a soft, high-pitched noise that filled the room and made Wonwoo’s heart leap. “Nope.”

 

“Then close your eyes, and let me be your first.”

 

First _what,_ Mingyu didn’t know, but he obeyed eagerly, struggling to keep his lips in a straight, pressed-together line. He knew you didn’t kiss with your teeth ( _if_ kissing was what Wonwoo was going to do), but he couldn’t stop smiling. In relief, or nervous anticipation, or some other feeling that made his limbs weak and his throat dry.

 

Wonwoo took in Mingyu’s vulnerable position, how open and ready he was to let him take the lead, how sure he was that he wanted Wonwoo to be his first. How his eyes were closed but his delicate eyelids were still fluttering, and his chest was rising and falling at a faster rate than it was a minute ago. How his lips were pink and full and twitching as he struggled to keep them pressed together tightly. And then he leaned in, and closed his own eyes at the very last second before their lips met.

 

He gave him a gentle, full kiss. The sharper, thinner lines of Wonwoo’s lips fit into Mingyu’s full, curving ones like a puzzle piece that finally fit. It was longer than a peck, but he broke away to give Mingyu a minute to adjust, and decide if he liked it.

 

But Mingyu wasn’t ready to break apart. He immediately stepped into the space Wonwoo had left between them, threw his arms around his neck and ran a hand through Wonwoo’s messy black hair, and kissed him again. When Wonwoo kissed, it was gentle, but when Mingyu kissed, it became sloppier and more intense.

 

 

They were sitting in the back of the dusty bakery pickup truck, trundling along on the thin, bumpy roads from the outskirts of the city back into the heart of it, where the bakery was. Mingyu’s co-worker agreed that they could bring Wonwoo back to the city and drop him off someplace once within Paris, and that meant they could sit nestled together within the stacks of packed wheat, hidden from view.

 

Mingyu had his head pressed against Wonwoo’s chest and Wonwoo had his legs stretched across his lap, and he kept running his hands over the softer, lighter-coloured scars that he’d always seen on Mingyu’s arms. “It tickles,” Mingyu whined.

 

“Get used to it, because I like the way they feel,” he answered shortly. “Anyway, Mingyu, I’ve been thinking, and you never even told me you liked me, and I thought I made it obvious that I liked you.”

 

“ _Obvious_? On what planet were your feelings made obvious?” Mingyu sounded incredulous. “I left you a pastry on your windowsill and I wrote something on the paper, didn’t see it?”

 

Wonwoo straightened up, confused. “So that’s why you were upset? Because I never saw anything like that on my windowsill. It was empty, as usual, when I went up that night.”

 

“Weird. Maybe someone took it,” Mingyu reasoned, but Wonwoo was too troubled by this piece of information to just shrug it off so quickly.

 

He shuddered at the thought of the only other person he suspected of having a key to his bedroom finding the love-note and pastry and stealing them. He was almost sure it was _her_.

 

“Back to your question. You looked happier talking to your Mademoiselle and those dumb socialites half the time, anyway, so I started doubting… um, us.”

 

“ _You knew that was an act._ It’s part of my job to be that way. I hate her and I hate them,” Wonwoo said, part of his mind still reeling at the thought of Mademoiselle going through his things and learning about his relationship with Mingyu, “I’d run away and live on bread and water if I could.”

 

“But what’s stopping you from doing that?”

 

“I need the money to send to my family… but I guess I can just get another job,” he was almost talking himself through it, answering his own plights, and Mingyu felt like he was peering into Wonwoo’s thoughts rather than being spoken to directly. “That, and I need a place to live.”

 

“Hey, can’t you climb down the fire escape during one of her parties and hide in the back of the bakery truck until it’s time to wrap up and leave? Sounds far-fetched, but isn’t that a way?”

 

“ _Sssh_ , Mingyu,” Wonwoo covered Mingyu’s mouth with his hand, a playful way of telling him it was impossible. “What about finding a new job, and a new place to live?”

 

Mingyu raised his eyebrows, as though he couldn’t believe Wonwoo for being so thick. “I _do_ have an apartment, you know…”

 

Wonwoo shushed Mingyu by lifting his face up, one hand on each cheek, and kissing him in small, continuous pecks until they fell into a happy silence.

 

 

On the topic of the Schrodinger’s Cat comparison, Wonwoo used to wish the hammer would shatter the vial of poison and kill him. He used to feel trapped in the box, counting down the days until he died. Now, it felt like Mingyu’s opened the box and found him to be very much alive, not stuck between life and death, as he viewed himself. It was like night and day, the difference Mingyu’s presence in his life had made on him.

 

When he sat at the foot of his bed after being dropped off two boulevards from Mademoiselle’s apartment (he insisted on that, to avoid further arousing her suspicions), he was unable to stop smiling as he replayed the last few hours in his head.

 

 

★

 

 

The kitchen was empty. The rest of the bakers who worked with Mingyu were shuffling about with trays, serving the guests. Wonwoo peered into the kitchen, to check if the coast was clear and he could take a minute off with Mingyu, but Mingyu seemed to be waiting for him already. He was leaning against the polished white countertop, black hair gelled and slicked sideways, appropriate for being a server at a black-tie event.

 

He smelled like confectioner’s sugar and cinnamon when Wonwoo crossed the checkered tile floor to hug him. Not that the two weren’t usually this way when in a secluded area, but Wonwoo felt excessively affectionate towards Mingyu tonight. He kind of felt like his time was running out again, but in a different way- like if he didn’t take advantage of the fact that the man he loved was standing in front of him right now, he would regret it in the future. So he did as his impulse told him and lived in the moment, embracing Mingyu tightly. “I missed you,” Mingyu said.

 

“So did I. And we’ve only been apart for a few hours.”. His eyes darkened and they lingered on Mingyu’s lips, and Mingyu knew what that meant, but the sound of footsteps startled them before he could focus on giving Wonwoo what he wanted. He broke from Wonwoo’s gentle, clinging grip and pretended to make a round to check if any pastry dishes needed to be filled in the salon, when in reality he was making sure no one was watching them.

 

When he returned, Wonwoo pressed him against the cold metal stove that sat in the corner, and kissed first his lips, then his jaw, then his neck and clavicles. His lips trailed between them, and his eyes were closed, giving the impression that he was savouring each and every one. Mingyu loved the feeling, and he loved it when Wonwoo took the lead like this, and his eyes would be closed if he didn’t love seeing the subtle pleasure on Wonwoo’s face. “You’re overwhelming me tonight.”

 

“And is that a bad thing necessarily?” He paused where his nose tip and Mingyu’s brushed. He was standing so his entire body was pressed into Mingyu’s, in a tight, locked embrace.

 

“I don’t think it ever will be.” Mingyu kissed his nose.

 

Wonwoo hugged him again, and Mingyu could feel him inhaling very deeply where his nose was buried into the crook in his shoulder. He rubbed his cheek against Mingyu’s rough canvas apron, and Mingyu could almost hear a deep purr rising every time his chest swelled up where it was pressed against his. “I have these thoughts- or, “superstitions” might be more appropriate. And they’re especially strong tonight.”

 

“What are they?”

 

Wonwoo was talking into his shoulder, so his voice was muffled and Mingyu could feel his chin digging deeper into it every time he opened his mouth to speak. “I feel like our time’s running out, and to me, my last minutes are only well-spent if they’re with you.”

 

Mingyu laughed, gently. “That’s a silly superstition, but I’m not going to tell you it is because I want you to keep this up.”

 

“But how are you so quick to dismiss it as silly?” He questioned.

 

He leaned down and whispered the words into Wonwoo’s ear, to maintain the hushed secrecy that any escape mission should, especially when in the belly of the beast (otherwise known as Mademoiselle’s apartment). “Because you’re going to be sleeping in my bed, in my apartment, _tonight_. Remember?”

 

Wonwoo was giddy and nervous. “I remember. Meet you at the bottom of the fire escape in thirty minutes. When the party’s over, and you’re done tidying up.”

 

Mademoiselle came into the room not long after, claiming she’d been searching for Wonwoo and guessed he might be in the kitchen. “And I have a tray of choux pastries that no one will be eating, so I brought it back here as a treat for all your hard work catering tonight.” She set a particularly delectable-looking plate on the countertop and smiled sweetly at Mingyu. It should’ve made Wonwoo uneasy, but he was so giddy that her out-of-character behavior hardly registered.

 

As they were leaving, her hand on the small of Wonwoo’s back, guiding him to where she wanted him to go, he looked over his shoulder and winked at Mingyu. Mingyu returned it, coupled with a lopsided smile.

 

 

They left the kitchen, wove through the crowd of scantily-dressed people, and began going up the curving stairs in the corner. Her broad heels thumped softly, but otherwise, they made no noise and attracted no attention to their whereabouts. “Why are we going upstairs…?”

 

“ _No reason,_ I simply want to ask you something.” Wonwoo gulped, and stole a glance at her. Her lips were smiling pleasantly, but her eyes betrayed that same lustful darkness that he always saw when she was around him. The expression that used to scare him, from time to time.

 

She unlocked his bedroom door- he didn’t have the time to put two and two together and realize that it meant she had a key to his room all this time- and let him in before following and shutting the door lightly behind her. The important thing was that Wonwoo was cornered and she was in front of him, barring his exit through the door, ready to pounce. He backed into his bed on accident. “So, _ah_ , what is it?”

 

“You’re a good actor. You definitely know,” she answered amiably. She still sounded pleasant and saccharine, and it sickened him. At the moment, Mademoiselle was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, whereas she usually didn’t try to hide her vicious personality behind a more pleasant presentation. It was also the second time Wonwoo had been told he should know what he’d done, but this time he was beginning to shape an idea of what this was about.

 

She smiled widely at him, and stepped closer- he had no more space to back up behind him, only his nightstands and the empty windowsill. She brought a small paper out of her pocket and unfolded it carefully, holding it in front of his face. The love letter Mingyu had tried giving him the other week. “I’ve got you all figured out.”

 

Wonwoo was worried, but he wasn’t scared yet. He had his youth to aid him if she, a middle-aged woman in heels, tried to attack, and he could probably escape out the window if things escalated beyond a situation where his basic self-defense was enough. He didn’t think she had many tricks up her sleeves, besides cruel words and digging her long fingernails into his arms. “It’s not-”

 

“Stop lying, you’re not stupid,” her tone switched abruptly to something cold and sharp, and she crumpled the paper in her balled fist, throwing it at the ground once she was done with it. “I’ve seen your bed empty and your footprints on the fire escape for months. Who do you think took that precious little pastry box off your sill?”

 

Wonwoo had nothing to say. His mouth was dry. He thought of Mingyu waiting for him downstairs, probably wondering why he was late.

 

“I know who _he_ is. I’m two steps ahead of you, Wonwoo, and it’s a shame you ended up being this stupid, because you were my favourite toy," she paused. "You know what happens to people like you, and I mean _people like you_ in every way possible. I consider what I’m about to do to be merciful.” She was an absolute psychopath, possessive and cruel and able to convince herself that whatever she was planning on doing was somehow alright.

 

Wonwoo didn’t move. He was still standing in the corner, pressed up against his nightstands, but he was handling the situation so calmly that he looked almost like he had downstairs. His breathing was just a little quicker than usual, and his expression was empty. Until he looked into the reflection in the huge mirror attached to the top of his dresser behind Mademoiselle, and saw the glint of something sharp and silver tucked into the garter belt under her dress.

 

“So… you’re going to kill me?” He almost laughed in relief. That was alright, a self-fulfilling prophecy considering how he was feeling earlier, as though this was his last night. Maybe it really was. He cared about living now, but he’d very easily, in the blink of an eye, trade in his life if Mingyu was guaranteed safety from her. If she wanted to stab him with her knife, so be it.

 

Mademoiselle smiled back, sweet and lethal, as though pitying Wonwoo for the relief he'd shown. She was going to do more than that, and she wanted him anything but content when he was about to die. “Your special friend has probably eaten all of those pastries I’ve left him, no? He’s just as stupid as you are if he has. He’ll be down in about half-an-hour, if I’m generous.”

 

The smile had already faded, but his face blanched so harshly, all the colour and blood slipping out of it so quickly that he held onto the nightstand behind him for support, because even his legs gave out on him and it was all he could do to stay standing upright. He was as stupid as she said he was. He neglected to see all the warning signs leading up to this moment.

 

Wonwoo immediately thought of Mingyu’s warm hands going cold as the poison she’d laced the pastries with made its way through his system, too lethal for an antidote.

 

And somewhere downstairs, Mingyu received a tiny note on his arm reading _don’t eat anything, please_ followed by a _help m-_ that smudged and cut off halfway through _._ In his mind’s eye, he immediately and perfectly envisioned Wonwoo’s cold hands growing warm from his hot spilled blood dripping into them.

 

**END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few things:  
> \- Mademoiselle's surname is Droit, which can mean "straight" in French, which I thought was funny because I have no sense of humour.  
> \- Mingyu and Wonwoo were communicating in Hangul when they were messaging each other for me, but that's only my imagination. It can be French or English or anything else in yours.  
> \- Please don't kill me because of the chapter's ending. Please. Egg me and TP my house instead.
> 
> Lastly, it took me a while to update this, probably the longest it'll ever take me between updates, but I have my excuses and I'm sure no one wants to hear them! Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this one, dear reader, and thanks to everyone who has subscribed, bookmarked, kudos-ed, or commented on this fic! I love you!
> 
>  
> 
> [twitter](http://twitter.com/pencanze)

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed, dear reader!
> 
> Verkwan will probably be the next chapter, and it'll continue like that; each pairing in their designated time period with a one-shot dedicated to them and their background story as it unravels. Until we reach Chan. But ssh, I won't spoil.
> 
> leaving a link to my [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/pencanze) if anyone wants to drop by or chat or something!


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